


Tumbling HP Crossovers

by esama



Series: Tumbling Snippets [2]
Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer, Final Fantasy VII, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hikaru no Go, Naruto, Sherlock (TV), Stargate - All Series, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, ワンパンマン | One-Punch Man
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Gen, M/M, Snippets, many many oneshots, many many plots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:51:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 26
Words: 35,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1647644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crossover snippets done to prompts from Tumblr. Harry Potter centric. Slash, crack, au, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mistakes (FFVII)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by amydrifting: Harry Potter x FFvii

Harry was a man full of regret. He regretted everything from waking up that morning to finding that stupid stone that had transported him to this stupid world, hell, he regretted ever coming into magic, he regretted being alive and ever leaving Privet Drive all those years ago.

"No, for the fifteenth fucking time, I will _not_ make you a magic item! Piss the fuck off!" he roared at the hopeful looking who-ever, he didn't even give a crap. Some sort of warrior. Gaia was full of them and they were all weird as fucking hell. And they all were of the mind that magic and magicians and everything related was for the sole reason of making them just a bit stronger.

"But… you've made magic items before," the warrior said, pouting. "I heard you made Sephiroth's shoulder guards."

"The fuck is a Sephiroth?" Harry asked. There had been a case with shoulder thingies, though. One annoying asshole with long hair and a stupid sword – Harry had charmed the asshole's shoulder pad thingies to make the guy weightless and then had watched happily how the guy helplessly just floated away in the wind, listening to the guy's lovely cursing all the way. It had been music to his ears.

"And you gave Angeal's his gloves!" the warrior said.

"The fuck do you think I've seen angels – are you high?" Harry asked suspiciously, wondering if it was worth it to try and just Disapparate the fuck out of here. Apparition was a bit risky around here but…

"You made gloves that are hard as metal and they're just leather!" the guy argued. "I know you did, he told me himself!"

Well there had been one guy who had been relatively nice for a pushy asshole. Harry had eventually gotten tired of all the hand-shake attempts and just put a weight charm on the guy's gloves, leaving him trying to pull his suddenly very heavy hands off the ground where they had been imbedded after the charm had taken effect.

"And you made Genesis his sword, so you might as well make something for me too!" the warrior said, pointing a finger at him.

"The fuck did I make anyone a sword," Harry grumbled.

"You did! It has runes and it glows and occasionally catches on fire!"

Oh, that one. Yeah he might've. The red headed idiot had been shoving the thing at his face, so Harry had just slapped a heating charm on it. It had been fun watching the guy burning his fingers on the thing. He'd fully expected the guy have burned himself to death on the thing by now.

"Well, whatever the hell I did before aside, I'm not doing shit for you," Harry informed the guy. "So you might as well just piss off and leave me alone."

"No way – you have any idea how long it took to find you? No, no way man. I am getting something from you even if it kills me," the warrior said.

"I can definitely help you with THAT one if you'd like," Harry said, gleam coming to his eyes.

"Ah. No, I just… Come on man. You can make these things like, from nothing, right?" the warrior asked pleadingly. "So make me something. Please? I'm gonna be a hero and hero needs a special magic item! Like shoulder guards of flight and gloves of might and a sword of flame."

"And a head of air, apparently," Harry agreed, narrowing his eyes. "You're not gonna leave me alone until I give you something, are you?"

"Nope!" the warrior said cheerfully and slammed a fist to his chest. "I'm the most tenacious SOLDIER around. Ask anybody. I can out last _anybody_."

"Uhhuh," Harry answered, rolling his eyes. Then he considered the guy – very manly man sort of person, all muscles. Apparently all muscles in his brain too, judging by the way he was going about. Harry most definitely didn't have the patience for him, not for extended periods of time.

A smile slowly came to Harry's face. The guy probably wanted something oh so epic, like a magic sword or some shit. Well fuck that noise. "You know what, I got the perfect thing for you," he said, flexing his fingers and calling on his magic. "Crouch down a bit."

The guy crouched down immediately, eager puppy dog look on his face as Harry stepped closer. Above his head – just beyond the edge of the guy's field of vision – he conjured an item, slapped some random spells on it, and then watched how the thing entwined itself into the guy's hair.

"There. Now piss the fuck off before I set you on fire," Harry said.

"Oh man! Thanks so much!" the warrior said, jumping to his feet and touching his hair. The smile froze on his face. "Wait. What?"

"Yep," Harry nodded, smiling. "I'm going to set you on fire now."

The guy's eyes widened and he quickly turned and ran – the tails of the gorgeous pink ribbon he now had on trailing after him while Harry cackled and threw balls of fire in his direction.


	2. Because Why Not (Stargate)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by shells33: Harry Potter x Stargate - sometimes life is just insane that way

Harry's life had reached a whole new level of _suck_. Voldemort had been defeated, things had turned for better and THEN some idiot had decided that he was an evil dark wizard, a lord in the making, and that he was going to enslave everybody. Which, right now, he rather regretted not doing. But which he couldn't do anything about because thanks to the geezers of Wizengamot, had been banished.

From _Earth_.

And now he was stuck, with only his wand keeping him alive. And it took a lot of work just to stay alive here. Four spells, all running constantly and simultaneously. Bubble of air around him, _completely_ around him and not just around his head. Cooling spell on said bubble of air because otherwise he'd overheat. Heavy-weigh charm on his whole body because fuck physics. And a sticking charm on his feet because otherwise he'd still float away like a fucking feather.

And so he was standing on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere, _space_.

Yep. His life had reached utterly glorious epic levels of sheer _suck_. Whether it was because someone had been vindictive enough to try and actually kill him like this – and they'd thought he'd die from this, hah – or because someone had just plain messed up and the spell had just gone wrong, it didn't even matter. This was his life. His life was fucking grand.

And currently his life was taking place on about a hundred by hundred kilometres of mostly barren rock, with no air, no light, no nothing, with only spell work keeping him alive and grounded on said barren rock. And while spell work might keep him from choking to death for now – that wouldn't last long, he could re-transfigure his own breathing only for so long – he had no food to his name. Or water. He was going to die of _thirst_ on an asteroid.

His fucking _life_.

"Okay, screw that noise," he murmured. Truth be told, the people who had been so eager to accuse him of dark magic hadn't been entirely off the mark. So he had been studying a bit. He had also been calling in some debts. Or pointing said debts out to people who owed them to him. And so he had built a bit of ah, hm… black mail empire centring around the fact that he knew the dirty secrets of a lot of people who would prefer to not have said dirty secrets exposed. The Invisibility Cloak was a beautiful thing. That aside. The main point of the whole debacle was power.

Which he had plenty of. And which he could maybe do something with.

He started by taking a look at the composition of the asteroid. Nickel and iron, some other elements, bit of silicon, surprisingly a lot of carbon, ice – score. Just enough materials to work something up with.

Harry flipped a grand bird at Earth's general direction, and got to work. It took him most of the, er, not-day – he couldn't even see the sun properly, it was just a dot of light in the distance at this range, so it wasn't like he had a proper day cycle. Lighting charm on a ball of rock, and pattern-float on said rock took care of the lighting problem, though, so whatever.

Once the day was over, he had transformed the asteroid into a mostly perfect sphere rather than the weird triangle-shape it had been before. He hauled in another asteroid that was floating about five hundred miles somewhere in that-a-way-direction and transfigured and condensed it into a extremely dense ball of mithril, and then stuck it into the centre of his now spherical asteroid – that took care of the gravity problem, and he could chuck the heavy weight and sticking charms, which made things a bit easier. It took a bit of twiddling with the mithril core to get things running properly, but by the time he was done, he had a bit of a magnetic field happening too.

 Then he spent most of the day doing a bit of on-the-spot alchemy with the available elements, mostly the carbon and the water, to make himself a bit of more or less fertile soil. Then he took a pebble, transformed it into a fern sapling, and planted it, sitting down in front of it to keep it within the bubble of his air. After that it was a couple hours of rapid fire seasoning – as in, putting the fern and it's soon blooming and dying children, through several years' worth of growth.

It took some work to make the ferns work without, well, _sunlight_ , but fuck, he hadn't spied on the Goblin Nation for nothing, he knew how to make things work in caves and an asteroid was a bit like an open cave, when it came to the available resources. He made the ferns magical, let them soak in his aura and that did the work, mostly. Soon he had a little garden of ferns that were adding their bit of oxygen to his bubble. Couple hundred thousand generations condensed into six hours, and the whole asteroid was covered in a field of ferns, and the bubble of air had been stretched into an atmosphere.

Harry finished making the fake-planet liveable by creating a series of hot springs which would take care of the air temperature as well as the moisture problem. The place was a bit too small for weather, but general air humidity would take care of the problem, probably.

Then he made himself a house, and made himself at home.

Over the next couple of maybe-years he added some other plants to the planet's variety – ferns were useful for creating top soil quickly, but they got boring after a while. He added trees and bushes and flowers and eventually the place got pretty decent. His house he upgraded into a castle, filling it with whatever came to mind, letting newly created vines crawl over it. All in all, it was a decent enough place to live, if one had to live in the asteroid belt.

He hadn't been expecting to meet any neighbours though. When the Asgard dropped by to ask him what the hell he was doing, how the hell he had done it and what to fuck was generally going on, it was a bit of a surprise.

"I'm breaking the laws of physics, what are _you_ doing?" Harry asked.

"We are here on a diplomatic mission to meet with certain individuals on Earth," the Asgardian – Thor – answered.

"I bet they're yanks," Harry answered. "Hey, if you come back this way, would you might doing a bit of shopping for me? I'm getting kind of tired of an all plant diet. I could use some animals around here."

Thor, after finding out that Harry could transmute Mithril – what he called Neutronium – was more than happy to help. Harry got every animal from Noah's Ark, Thor got several tons of Mithril every time he swung by – though he had to haul asteroids for Harry to transfigure because Accio-ing stellar objects was hard on the back muscles. Overall, it was a decent enough agreement.

Then he dropped the SG-1 on Harry's lap without warning. They were generally okay people, though. Carter had a mild coronary and Jackson spent most of the time meditating to keep himself from following suite, Teal'c kept calling him King Kai for some reason – something to do with some Earth anime called Dragon Ball which Teal'c was particularly fond of.

O'Neill just rolled with it, and was satisfied just kicking back and watching the sky after Harry created a series of telescopes. Nothing like stargazing on a world with no sun and no light pollution, after all.

"It's a nice place you got here. Desolate but nice," the man commented.

"Thanks. I like it," Harry agreed, smiling.

Teal'c spent the visit mostly running around, disappointed that the gravity wasn't higher. Jackson, when he came out of it, wanted to know if Harry was ascended and what he knew about the ancients. Eventually Carter snapped back to herself too and promptly decided she wanted to mine out the planetoid's core to see what made it tick. Harry kicked them out after that – as in, made a Portkey and sent them back to Earth.

"Hm. So I could've just made a Portkey right at the start and just gone home," he mused.  Then he shrugged, and got back to lounging about. Life was good, when you were king of your own world. And hell, it was definitely easier than trying to rule a bunch of morons.

Plus he always had a clear view of the Milky Way right above his head and that was pretty cool.


	3. Mondays (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by blacknosugarh: Harry Potter x Naruto - Mondays

On Mondays, Harry's shop landed in Konoha. Where it pushed itself through was different every time – sometimes it was near the town centre, sometimes it was in the outskirts, once it had been smack in the middle of a training field. When he opened the shop this Monday he found the shop smack in the middle of the restaurant district, and that the front of his shop had changed into one of those weird Konohan style fast food restaurants, that were open at the front with the counter top practically visible to the street.

Of course, his shop didn't sell food, but whatever. It was what the place wanted to do that day and it was more or less fine with Harry. He inspected the changes and opened the shop more or less normally, before setting himself behind the counter and idly going through some paper work while waiting for customers.

The first one was a young ninja – not yet a genin but looking like she was working hard towards it. She was shy and jittery with those large colourless irises that marked her a Hyuga, one of the local aristocrats. She looked confused when she found herself sitting on the barstool across from Harry – but then, they all did.

"What can I get for you, young lady?" Harry asked, closing the book.

"I don't… what can I get here?"

"Mostly self control," Harry answered. "This is the place where you can change yourself. You can buy a character trait or sell one if you have one you don't want. Or if you want something more advanced, I also deal with memories and their removal, and with mental disorders thought that costs extra.

"People can… sell traits?" the girl asked, her eyes widening. "Like, like what?"

"Last customer I had sold away the love he had for a girl and bought introversion," Harry shrugged. It had been a weird deal, but he had seen plenty of those. "I guess he wanted to call it quits with people. Usually people sell away character traits they don't like. If they're mean and don't want to be, they can sell away that. Or if they're too hesitant and want to be more confident - -"

"I want that!" the girl said quickly and then pulled into herself, like startled by her own outburst. "I… I am too shy. I want to be more confident."

Harry considered her. "It can be dangerous, to change weakness for a strength," he said warningly. "It can change your whole personality. You stand the risk of turning into a complete asshole, you know. I'd suggest you do something a little less mind altering. Sell the shyness or buy confidence, but I wouldn't do both if I were you."

"T-then I will sell the shyness," she said. "It… it affects everything I do."

Harry nodded. "Do you want to be paid in trait or in money?" he asked while taking out a crystal phial. "Any and every trait you can imagine is available, so there is plenty variety to choose from."

"But you said not to get one."

"I told you not to get confidence along with getting rid of shyness. Nothing stops you getting from something else. Say, studiousness if you're bad at studying," Harry shrugged. It was what he would've bought, if he could've gone back to his childhood and redo his whole life.

The girl considered it. "What would be something that would make me better at training?" she asked slowly.

"I don't know about better. Studiousness is one, but it might manifest in a way that just makes you want to read a lot of books. Perseverance is good for making you able to keep training longer though," Harry considered. "Or fortitude. Or maybe competitiveness, if you have someone to compete with, though that can go overboard at times."

"Then… I'd like perseverance," the girl said. "I'll trade my shyness for perseverance. Is that okay'?"

"It's perfectly fine," Harry nodded and took out a contract. "Just sign here and we'll make the trade."

She signed, and then sat still while Harry extracted the shyness-trait from her head, before inserting the perseverance. The change in her was instant and obvious – she sat up a bit straighter and stopped twiddling with her hands. She blinked and looked around and then, looking confused, walked out of the shop. Harry ignored her, seeing that they all did the same thing – now that her transaction was done, she had no need to see the shop anymore.

Instead he turned, placed the shyness he had bought onto the shelf behind him, among hundreds and hundreds of other character traits. Then, putting the contract away, he sat back down, and waited for another customer.

It was a boy about the girl's age, with spiky black hair and the Uchiha fan on the back of his shirt.

"You sell and buy character traits, right?" the boy asked. "I heard you talking with Hinata."

"That I do," Harry answered, considering him. He had heard about the Uchiha massacre in his last visit, but he hadn't heard that anyone had survived. How interesting. "What can I do for you, young sir?"

"I wanna trade my fear for confidence," the boy said.

"That can come to bite you in the ass later on. It can become overconfidence and that can ruin you. How about fear for serenity instead?" Harry asked.

"Serenity?" the kid scoffed. "What does that do?"

"Makes you able to take on anything and everything with a level head, among other things," Harry answered. "Plus, it can give a person peace. It can be pretty handy." Especially for someone with traumas behind them. "Plus, fear is a dangerous thing to sell, you might want to reconsider that too."

The kid considered it and then jumped to sit on the bar stool. "Why?" he asked. "What's wrong with selling fear? Or… if I sell it, what will I lose?"

"Fearless people can't estimate danger or calculate risks," Harry shrugged. "If you don't fear anything, then you very well might run head-long into any dangerous situation. That, as you might guess, can get you killed."

"You didn't say anything to Hinata about selling shyness being dangerous."

"Shyness isn't an inborn, natural survival instinct," Harry answered, giving him a pointed look. "Fear is."

"Oh. Hm," the kid considered it. "I want to be strong. I want to be _much stronger_. What will help me with that?"

Harry sighed. One of those then.


	4. Median (Hikaru no Go)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by miss-tricks: Harry Potter x Hikaru no Go - ghost whisperers and other spiritually inclined individuals for hire

Sai kept staring sadly at the floor while Hikaru paced along his room, waiting. His parent's weren't home – his father was on a company retreat and had taken his mother with him and together the pair of them had decided that since Hikaru was now basically working for a living, he damn well could manage to stay in the house alone for a while. Which was fair – he could. It still felt kind of weird. Like he was doing something behind their backs.

Which he was.

"Hikaru, are you sure this will help?" Sai asked quietly.

"I don't know. We can hope," Hikaru answered, gritting his teeth and glancing at the ancient, tall Goban. Then he looked up as the doorbell rang. "Okay," he said while Sai stood up. "Time to face the music."

They headed downstairs where Hikaru, with vague trepidation, opened the door. The man behind it didn't look like anything he had expected. He looked normal – he wore jeans and a button up shirt with rolled up sleeves and had nothing of the mysterious stuff on him. "You're… the medium?" Hikaru asked, disbelieving. "You're, um… Hari Potary?"

"Harry Potter, and yep, I'm the guy," the guy answered in a perfectly accent free voice, looking over Hikaru's head and straight at Sai. "And I see why you might need one."

Hikaru let out a breath. Fuck. He had hoped – he really, really had hoped that the guy would be for real. His website had seemed like the real thing, and people had given the guy some decent ratings and stuff. But it was one thing to hope the guy might see Sai and another to actually _have someone see Sai_. It was… weird. And vaguely terrifying.

"Come on in," Hikaru said, opening the door for the man, who stepped inside with a friendly smile. Hikaru led the guy to the living room where they sat down, Hikaru on the couch and Sai on the floor beside him. The medium guy glanced around and then looked at Hikaru.

"So. What can I do for you?" Harry Potter asked. "I'm guessing you're not after an exorcism."

"Yeah, no way, nuh-uh," Hikaru said quickly while Sai shuddered at the thought of it. "No, I'm pretty much fine with Sai here. It's just that…" he trailed away, not sure how to put the problem.

"Pardon me," Sai said. "I feel like I am slipping away. Before I was bound to Hikaru I was bound to an object – to a Goban – and it has now started showing sings of… weakening. I… I think I am fading."

"Yeah," Hikaru nodded. "The Goban has these blood stains that no one can see, except me and Sai – and they've started to fade. We think it might be that Sai's weakening or something. That he might be about to vanish or something and we don't really want that."

"I want to stay," Sai whispered.

"And I want him to stay," Hikaru nodded.

"Hm. Well that's a first one. Normally people come to me to get rid of their ghosts, not to keep them," the medium murmured, eying them thoughtfully. "Do you have the Goban here? I need to have a look at it to see what might be the problem."

"Yeah, it's upstairs," Hikaru said and stood up. "I'll get it."

Potter spent a good ten minutes examining the Goban while Hikaru and Sai waited nervously, watching from the side. Sitting down on the floor with his ankles crossed, the guy looked at them and started asking questions – how long had Sai been around, how long had they been together, what had happened before the stains had started to fade.

"At a guess, I'd say Sai's unfinished business – which must've between what kept him bound to this world – is finished now. He's passed his knowledge onto you. His goal has been met," the medium said thoughtfully. "That you still want to stay and are still fading, that is odd thought. Hmm…"

"Is there nothing you can do?" Sai asked quietly

"Hm? Oh, there's plenty I could do. I could trap you back in the Goban, or bind you to Hikaru by contract, I could even bind you to this house or any other location, it wouldn't even be hard," the medium said, shrugging his shoulders. "But before I know for sure why you're fading away in the first place, it might not be such a good idea. Magic like this is old and can be dangerous – it's not a good thing to mismatch your enchantments," he said. "I can give you a spiritual equivalent of an energy drink, that will help you hold on a bit longer, but I won't bind you to anything just yet."

"But –" Hikaru started.

"I wanna observe you two, and figure out where the snag is," the medium said thoughtfully. "Cover my bases, as it were. How long do you guys intend to stay this way, though?"

"My whole life," Hikaru said quickly. "I want Sai here and with me until the day I die."

"And after that?" the man asked.

"After that?" Sai asked, confused

"What happens after Hikaru dies? Do you two wanna move on together, or stay and haunt this world together?" the medium asked and then gave them a look. "Is… this the first time you've talked to a medium about this?"

"You're the first medium we've ever met. The first one who's ever seen Sai at all," Hikaru said, shaking his head in wonder.

"Oh. Well," the guy considered that and then shrugged. "It's been a while since I've had a student and I've never had a ghost for a student, but first time for everything I guess. Okay, let's start with the basics. What's a ghost?"

"Er?" Hikaru said and pointed at Sai.

Potter looked at him and then at Sai and sighed. "Right. I'm gonna need some coffee for this," he said and stood up. "Any place good for a cup of highly caffeinated beverage anywhere nearby? Come on. My treat."


	5. Forest Spirit (Stargate)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by ladyenterprize: HP x Stargate - Languages

It takes Harry about a week or so to figure things out. Firstly, he's not home – though he knew _that_ much from the start. But no, he's not home on the most immediate and, well, world changing level. He is not even on his home planet anymore. What's more, he's not even on a _planet_ at all.

No, he's on a moon. It's about a third the size of Earth's moon judging by what he's been able to glean with wandless scanning and detection charms. It's not like Earth's moon in many ways. Despite being smaller, the gravity is about the same as on earth. Despite being smaller, it has life and an atmosphere and probably a magnetic field and all that rot – plant life seems to find the place perfectly suitable for life and who's he to argue with that. There is subtle but very important differences between the general make-up of the world. The core and the mantle of the moon, whatever they're made off, aren't made of nickel or iron. It's something heavier. Something a bit more dangerous.

The day is eight hours long – which makes nigh time very brief and that messes up his bodily rhythm immediately. The plant life is weird and he has a feeling it doesn't have all the minerals and vitamins he needs and he'll probably end up with deficiencies soon. The water is clean though and it doesn't seem like there are many predators. Or much any life in general, really. Some birds, yes, a few smaller animals, but he hasn't seen anything bigger since arriving.

The most striking thing about the little moon is the fact that when sun goes down, the planet comes up. It's an enormous, extremely impressive gas giant with a faint set of rings around it – it's mostly green and white but it too has those spots, the eternal storms that churn in its atmosphere, which are almost blue. If he sits still long enough, he can just barely see them move – and he can sit for a long while, just looking at it.

There's not really much else to do than watch the thing, during the night. It gets too dark to do anything and despite his attempts he hasn't managed to make a wandless light charm. He can make fire, sure, but the moon forests are so thick and old that he doesn't dare to do that too often, not wanting to risk starting a forest fire. Besides it's so warm that he doesn't really need it anyway – and with most of his food being made of nuts and berries, he doesn't exactly need to cook anything either.

Time passes. The first weeks Harry wanders around in hopes of finding something, anything, that might change things. A way home maybe. Or just people. Or aliens, if nothing else. Eventually he settles down – there's nothing but forests, forests and more forests. He makes himself a home in the branches of one colossal tree, with branches big enough to work as streets.

He takes the vines that crawl up the colossal tree trunks and down their branches, and weaves them together into nets, stretching those nets between forking branches, before slowly starting to cover them with fallen tree branches, to create something like floors. They're uneven and kind of organic, but he doesn't want to cut down the trees themselves or even injure them. He doesn't really need to either – and there's something weirdly comforting in trying to live peacefully with the forest.

He might be stuck in this place, but it's not the moon's fault, it's not the forest's fault, so he's not going to take it out on it either.

It takes him weeks and months to eventually build his, well… it's not quite a house. More a tent. It's made of woven vines with supple branches and grass filling in the holes, stretched across one of the bendy platforms, the ceiling attached to the branches above. It takes some magic to make it work, but he's getting better with wandless now that it's all he can do – and also, it seems like something about the moon makes magic a little… easier, somehow. Whatever it is, it allows him to harden the tent enough so that it holds strong. He fills it with make shift furniture, a bed made of grass and moss, and manages even to create something like linen from the vine fibres. It's not bad. It's not Hogwarts, but it's not bad.

Time passes by. Months. Then years. He learns to figure out which plants give him some of the minerals some others don't. He makes himself a make-shift water tower and puts up a shower. He weaves more platforms, more out of boredom than anything else, and learns to make them from _living_ vines, which only grow tougher as they grow older. In his third year, there is an enormous storm that blows his original creations off the trees, but the living platforms don't even budge, and since then he makes everything from living plants. It's slower, it takes months to make anything that way, but it's a way to pass the time.

He learns how to make spells in a new way. He nets them and weaves them the same way he does with the vines. He learns to make lights that stick and burn no fuel, by using the local flowers – they have some of that weird mineral in them, which makes Harry sick if he tries to eat them, but which takes magic like a sponge. One night, when bored, he lights up the whole forest by making the blue flowers glow.

He gets used to the quiet. The birds and animals get used to him. Sometimes he feeds them. Sometimes his little settlement in the tree branches is covered with little birds, asking for seeds. He makes little feeders and fills them with magically extended stores of nuts and in the third year, he keeps waking up with the birds preening at his hair fondly.

He's been on the planet for almost four years, when the aliens come. And they have to be aliens, too – they come down on a _spaceship_ with a vaguely pyramid like shape, landing maybe four miles off from his little settlement. Curious and bored and maybe a little hopeful of getting off of the moon, Harry immediately makes a beeline for them.

Then he watches how the armoured, staff wielding aliens off load a number of what have to be slaves – suspiciously human looking slaves – before starting to rig the trees with explosives, and bringing a good four dozen of them crashing down. The slaves are then kicked and prodded to work, to moving the colossal trees, cutting them up and setting them aside. And if the slaves don't work fast enough, the armoured aliens have no trouble with just shooting them to death as punishment.

Two of the slaves die before Harry can't watch it any more. Blowing up the trees is bad enough, but killing people? On _his_ moon? No. That just won't fly.

Harry counts the armoured aliens before weaving a net of invisibility around himself, and heading off to take them down. It's… actually rather easy. The aliens obviously aren't used to fighting invisible opponents, and after Harry's taken down a couple of them, the rest just panic. Moments later, they're running back to their spaceship in panic, trying to escape – Harry stops them, by netting another spell around the ship itself and keeping it down.

It takes him less than an hour to go through all the armoured aliens. They too are human beneath the armour he soon finds, and he deals with them accordingly – erasing all their memories and leaving them standing around, looking confused. Their weapons Harry confiscates, sending them off to his settlement, to be dealt with later.

Then he releases the confused looking slaves and sits back to watch what they'll do, still invisible and unseen.

One of them tries to kill one of the armoured ones, before Harry stops him. Another almost succeeds and Harry stops him too – and keeps doing it, until they get the hint. The slaves and the armoured ones all stand around in confusion for a while, muttering to themselves in a language Harry can't understand. Some of them – actually a lot of them – go down on their knees, press their foreheads to the grass, and start mumbling prayers.

They look hungry so Harry goes up to the trees and starts dropping down nuts and the edible leaves, harvesting some of the berries and sending them floating down on enormous leaves. Then, still invisible, he uses rustling of the foliage and the snap of branches to lead them to a source of water, watching how they drink greedily and then wash themselves and their clothing, still confused but looking happy. Some of them have weirdly reverent looks on their faces. There's even more praying now.

When the night comes, he stops the aliens from making fires and instead lights up the glowing flowers. He's not sure what to think about the fact that they all seem to think this too is worthy of prayer, but maybe it's comforting to them.

In the following days that eventually stretch into weeks, the aliens raid the space ship and start making themselves at home in the forest. Harry shows them the edible plants and nuts and berries by dropping them all on their heads, and keeps them from trying to eat the poisonous ones. The aliens learn quickly not to make fires except from naturally fallen branches. They're respectful of the trees they first blew up, and occasionally pay homage to them. When one of the destroyed tree stumps start showing signs of life, the little tribe of aliens celebrate it.

Somehow, Harry had accidentally created a cult of tree worshippers. He's pretty okay with that.


	6. Disconnect (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by kyaksa: Harry Potter x Naruto, family or loyalty

Harry glanced up from the book he had been reading when he heard steps. Snapping the book shut, he shifted where he sat, eyes keenly on the bars separating him from the rest of the world.

It was Itachi. And, judging by the sound of it, only Itachi. How surprising.

"Evening," Harry greeted the young Uchiha, and laid the book down on the floor beside him. "What brings you here tonight, young master?"

"Don't call me that," Itachi answered, coming to the bars and then hesitating there, looking at him. Harry returned the favour with a crooked little smile, taking in Itachi's armour. ANBU now – how every impressive. Though then again Itachi might've been an ANBU before, and merely changed his armour before coming to his oh so excellent lair.

Itachi sighed and sat down on his knees, just far enough that Harry wouldn't have been able to reach him if he had tried, but close enough to make the attempt very tempting. "Konoha wants me to kill my family," the young assassin said, and Harry perked up.

"Oh?" he asked and came to his feet. "That's a… surprising development. What makes the town so vicious towards your, hm… _stellar_ lot?"

Itachi glared at him. "You know," he said.

"I do," Harry agreed, walking to the bars and crouching down, to face the young assassin at his level. "Your father was here just the other day, trying to squeeze an admission from me. Or a boon, whichever. Ace to shove up his arse, to make his little coup a little more likely to succeed," he said, resting his elbows on his knees and watching the young man - _fucking teenager_ really – closely. "Is that why you're here – to ask my boon?"

Itachi didn't answer, looking at the bars between them for a moment. "I'm going to kill them," he said. "I don't need _your_ help to do it."

"You don't," Harry agreed and snorted. He wasn't entirely sure which of _them_ Itachi meant – his family or Konoha. It didn't really matter to him. "The thing about your family is that _none of you_ need my help to do _anything_ and you never have. And still you come here looking for it anyway because, whatever you are, gamblers you are not. You want advantage over advantage over advantage and the slightest chance of failure is never permitted. So," he added. "What do you want, Itachi?"

The young assassin considered that. "Say they all die," he said. "What happens to you?"

"Not a fucking thing," Harry shrugged and waved a hand at his expertly made home. "I'm here and I will be here until this fucking planet rots away. Nothing you or anyone else does up above will change that."

Itachi blinked at that. "But I thought --?"

"That I was bound to your family? You're an arrogant little bloodline," Harry muttered, shaking his head. "I was here before your ancestors were conceived. The Sage of Six Paths is an _infant_ compared to me. The nine demons are nothing but parasites and _lint_ to me. The hell, do you think it was _you_ and _your family_ that made this?" he laughed and stood up. "No, you just happened to be lucky enough to build your homes above mine."

The assassin's eyes widened a little at that and he swallowed. "I thought Madara –"

Harry shook his head, resting his hands at his hips. "I don't care what you thought. What do you want, Itachi?" he asked.

He didn't get an answer for a while, as the young assassin just stared at him. "Why were you put here?" he then asked.

Harry shrugged. "Immortality is scary shit for mortal people," he said simply.

"That's it? But this prison --"

"During the first iteration of this world, people were a bit more… versatile when it came to using supernatural powers. Your chakra is a diluted, bioprocessed fragment of what they had. Indestructible and impenetrable weren't just words – they were facts back then."

"So you can… never leave?" Itachi asked frowning. "No matter what we do? But… we can open the door! You mean to say all those security measures we take…"

Harry smiled condescendingly at the assassin. "What makes you think I can't leave?" he asked, amused.

Itachi's eyes widened and he shot up to his feet.

"That's it," Harry said, smiling as he turned to return to his books. "Face the reality."

"But… then why --?" Itachi trailed away and looked at him for a long while, a realisation coming to his face. "You want to stay here?"

"Mm-hmm," Harry agreed and sat down among the books. "This place is the only thing that remains of the world before," he said. "The world outside means nothing. Your family, your village, none of it means anything. This place… is everything."

Itachi just stared at him and Harry smiled. "So, what do you want, young master?" he asked, almost kindly. "A boon to help you along with your journey to hell?"

"I… wanted to set you free," the assassin admitted. "Or kill you. One or the other."

"Cute," Harry said and reached for a book. "If that will be all then get out."

Itachi nodded and hesitated. "Why… did you let them hurt you? We've been torturing you for years, why --"

"You're assuming again, that what you do actually has an effect on me," Harry answered, and opened the book. "Have a happy massacre, Itachi."


	7. Easy (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by kuailongkit: Harry/Itachi, Both of them dealing w/ PTSD?  
> (Warnings for violence and sex mixed)

The first time Harry wakes up to Itachi's hands on his throat, he sends the man almost through the wall. They fight two minutes in a frenzied haze of memories and nightmares, before reality asserts and they're as bloodied as they remember, hurting from new bruises and cuts.

Itachi tries his best to just run off when he realises what's happened. Harry puts him in a body bind and after digging the kunai out of his belly, he spends half an hour healing them both before they bleed to death. Once he's certain that they're not going to die, he makes sure Itachi won't run off and releases him.

They have the most awkward cup of tea at three o'clock in the morning, with the inn ransacked and blood splattered, newly knitted skin aching with the memory of scars that Harry made sure they wouldn't have.

"With the way this country is, I bet you were pretty young," Harry comments idly.

"Hn," is Itachi's only answer, and that is about all Harry needs to set the whole matter aside. They stay awake for a couple of hours in awkward, uneasy silence before Itachi heads off to shower the bloodstains off, and Harry cleans the room with a couple spells, fixing the furniture and even conjuring a new set of linens. Then, making a conscious decision, he strips nude and lays down on the now intact futon, waiting.

The sex is surprisingly tender and gentle all things considered, Itachi moving slowly above him, with only the way he keeps pushing Harry's hands away as he rides him marking the tumult of his mind. Harry lets him do what he wants, gritting his teeth and holding his orgasm in until Itachi grabs himself and strokes himself to completion, before spending himself inside the man who had, just a little while ago, done his damnest to kill him.

Somehow, they manage to actually sleep that night. The next morning Itachi is, of course, gone and Harry continues on with his own travels, more or less certain he's not going to meet the man again. Only he does. Again and again.

The second time Harry wakes up with Itachi's hands on his throat, he breaks the man's nose with his elbow. He fixes it about a minute later, while Itachi gasps his way to reality and clarity under yet another body bind, and they don't talk about it. Truth be told, they don't really talk about much at all.

There's something desperate and violent in Itachi's eyes, so Harry pins him down and forces a little bit more reality into him. Itachi lets him with greedy gulps of air, fingers clawing new bruises across Harry's back, his thighs powerful and insistent around Harry's waist. They try and gasp for the same breath and Harry ends up with a split lip and the whole thing tastes like blood.

That morning, Harry's the one to leave, though he's not entirely sure if Itachi is really asleep or not where he lays, soiled and spent and almost too tempting to be left. But leave him Harry does, because they're probably going to end up killing each other at this rate.

The third time Harry finds Itachi's hands on his throat, it's to find Itachi covered in cuts and scraps and bleeding entirely too much – and everything in the room is floating. Up until the point where Harry realises that he isn't at Hogwarts and then in a clatter it comes down, the furniture and reality both. Itachi holds on just long enough to pass out on top of him, blood loss and exhaustion nearly killing him.

Harry doesn't leave him that morning, despite having fixed him during the night. Instead he stays there, running a hand over the man, not sure what the hell he's doing, what the hell they're doing. Itachi wakes and looks at him over his bare shoulder.

"How old were you, then?" he asks, and Harry kisses his shoulder in answer. It starts out tender, and Harry keeps thinking the cuts he had laved all over the man in his unconscious frenzy, and he wants to be gentle – but he ends up fucking the man hard and brutal and guilty and Itachi takes it, hand clasped around Harry's wrist, _pulling him_ insistently deeper. After coming, Itachi rides him hard enough to hurt them both. It's a novel experience.

They kiss for the first time before Itachi leaves him, bruised anew and confused.

The fourth time Itachi's hands come to his throat, they're both awake and conscious and neither has had a nightmare. Harry lies down and waits and Itachi's hands aren't gentle, aren't harsh – they're just there.

"I've never actually strangled anyone," Itachi murmurs, looking fascinated and confused.

"I've never intentionally killed anybody," Harry answers.

Itachi keeps his hands there for a long while.


	8. Senses (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by elynight: Harry Potter x Naruto, five senses

Harry lives in the Village Hidden of Rain for one simple reason – it's actually really hidden. The fact that the ruler of said village finds him useful enough not to expose him to the rest of the world – all the while being still wary enough not to try and control him – helps. Pein is a powerful individual and Harry isn't entirely sure he would've liked to challenge the man – honestly, he didn't know which one of them would come out on top any better than Pein himself did. It was just as well that neither was particularly inclined to get themselves killed, trying to find out.

Instead Harry lives a relatively quiet live in the penthouse of one of the many skyscrapers of the Village Hidden in Rain, running a business of herbs that grow nowhere but under his guidance, of potions that no other human being can make, of seals that no one can read or understand – of arts that fight those of this world. It's a gamble, every time, trying to figure out what's safe to grow or make, what's safe to sell. Magic, it turns out, has the bad habit of blowing up spectacularly when it came in contact with chakra.

Akatsuki is his main client, of course. He makes their cloaks and their hats and charms their weapons and sometimes, when he manages to balance magic and chakra just right, he even sells them healing potions. And if those things sometimes combust in particularly destructive ways, well… they all know the risks in accepting what he makes, at any rate. Harry doesn't particularly like any of them, anyway, so if they blow up, it won't hurt his conscience any.

That is, until Itachi comes to him with a rather unusual request.

"I'm losing my eyesight," the man admits, no shame, no emotion what so ever, just plainly spoken fact. "Is there anything you can make?"

Harry points at his own eyeglasses. "If I could affect eyesight, I already would've," he says and lowers his hand. "But I guess your eyes are different. If you let me have a look at them – a proper look – I'll see if there's anything I can do."

Itachi doesn't even hesitate and Harry closes the shop – as much as the shop can be closed, seeing that it's not an actual shop but his _house_. He motions Itachi to lie down on the couch and then spends an utterly fascinating hour, delving into the mysteries of the Sharingan.

Itachi isn't just losing his sight – he's accumulating quite a bit of brain damage, actually, burning neurons left and right with the use of the Sharingan eyes. The eyes scorch the brain tissue with their power as they force the brain to memorise anything and everything they see, erasing function as they do. The problem with Itachi's sight has more to do with his optic nerve, though.

"You've got more than just the Sharingan, don't you?" Harry asks and doesn't wait for an answer Itachi would never even give. "That something is burning through your optic nerve, and it's damaging your cones. I can maybe put together something that might help but… as long as you keep using that thing, whatever it is, you will continue losing eyesight."

"And if I don't use it?" Itachi asks, frowning, sitting up.

"You won't heal. But you won't get worse either," Harry shrugs. "You really should stop using the Sharingan as much, too. It's literally damaging your brain."

"That I knew," Itachi admits and thinks for a moment, silent, frowning. "How long until you put together your… something?"

"A month maybe," Harry shrugs. "I haven't needed the potion before, so I haven't reworked the formula. I need to do tests to make sure it won't blow your eyeballs right out."

"Ah," Itachi nodded. "I'll see you in a month, then."

Harry finishes the potion in three weeks, testing it on specifically bred chakra rich rats – a lot of whom die in various gruesome ways until he can perfect the potion. When Itachi comes, Harry has tested the potion on a Rain volunteer – a blind old man he'd literally found on the street. The man's vision hadn't returned, but his optic nerve based migraines had eased off – and he hadn't _died_ so Harry considers it a success.

"You've used your Sharingan, I see," Harry notes, after examining Itachi's eyes.

"Not as much," the Akatsuki member murmurs, blinking at him.

"If this isn't much, I'd hate to think what is," Harry shook his head and took some of the potion in a pipette. "Keep your eyes open."

One drop in each eye, and Itachi goes blind for a week. Neither Itachi himself nor Pein is happy about it – Itachi very nearly kills him, or tries to anyway. Harry pins him down and assures Pein that it's probably temporary and with a flat, dead stare Pein orders him to fix it or suffer the consequences.

"You should consider it an opportunity," Harry offers to Itachi – who stays in his house, his unwilling guest and patient. "At this rate you're going blind anyway. You're going to have to get used to it – this'll be like a trial run."

"I'll consider it a success when you're lying cold and lifeless at my feet," Itachi answers flatly, and Harry laughs.

It's a very interesting week.


	9. Burn (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt by putsoneinmind: Harry Potter x Naruto, protection

Itachi summons him the first time when he's seven. His team is injured, possibly dead, and the summoning scroll given to him by his father is blood stained and half torn, but it's his only chance and he takes it. What comes out of it is not the crow of the Uchiha, but a man with black hair and green fire in his eyes.

The man holds him almost gently, while the assailants just _die_ around him, the green fire raging on at all sides, lethal and unforgiving. It kills not just the assailants – but Itachi's team-mates as well and after the man sets him down, Itachi swears never to summon him again.

He doesn't tell anyone what happened. His team mates are marked as deceased in the line of duty, they're added to the Heroes Memorial, and Itachi says nothing. There is now a black seal in the centre of his right palm, the shape of a lightning bolt, and he almost cuts it off with the tip of his kunai. Only he doesn't. Because…

Itachi's nine, and this time his team mates are dead for sure, their heads resting at his feet and he's _not crying_. He's screaming, his leg his broken and his side is bleeding and his hand is burning and the man is there, black hair and green fire and all, and four acres of the forest burn that night, eighty nine people die. Itachi is branded a hero, rather than a mass murderer, and the innocent who died are chalked up as collateral damage. No one knows about the summon.

He doesn't swear not to use it again, because he knows he will, he knows he probably must. He wears a glove or a gauntlet at all times, and even under them he covers the hand in gauze. The lightning mark burns.

He's eleven and his team mate is a traitor and Itachi is half dead. She's preparing to cut out his eyes and he's almost drowsy enough with the drug to let her – only his damned palm is still burning and it's keeping him awake and alert.

"Poor little Uchiha," the traitor says, smiling, scalpel in hand – and then she's burning in a glorious emerald blaze.

Itachi passes out with the uncomfortable knowledge that he didn't summon the man intentionally, almost hoping he won't wake up – but he does, later, when a great deal of the forest had burned, and the traitor has been turned into a pile of bone ash. Itachi leaves the ash there, throws up three times on his way to Konoha, and only barely keeps himself from chopping his hand off.

Itachi is thirteen, and they want him to kill his family. He does it with his palm encased in steel, a specially made glove underneath his gauntlet making him the tiniest bit clumsy, but he doesn't care – he won't let the Uchiha burn. Die they must, but they'd do so by his hand, and his hand alone.

He's chased out of Konoha by ANBU, the more over excitable of which nearly catch him with a knife. By miracle and luck he manages to get away before his hand explodes in green flames, and when the man appears he's alone.

"From here on it doesn't matter who dies," Itachi grunts through the pain while the man stares at him. "But I won't let you burn my home to the ground."

"Do you really think I would?" the man asks, sounding curious.

"You always burn everything," Itachi says, staring at his hand – the lightning bolt is red and smoking. "Do you _have to_ hurt this much?" he asks, annoyed.

"I don't know. Do I?" the man asks and looks at him, somehow pointed and meaningful

He vanishes and Itachi douses his hand in a river and it does very little to ease the burning. It burns through his first meeting with Madara, with his meeting with Pain, through his initial months in Akatsuki. It scorches him whenever Kisame gets too near and feels like an inferno with Hidan's proximity.

For years it does nothing but _hurt_ and the Third Hokage dies and then Itachi returns to Konoha, momentarily, to see if there was a new Hokage to come and, of course, to try and acquire Uzumaki Naruto. The mark burns through several fights and their eventual escape, but Itachi has almost learned to ignore it. Kisame is annoyed by how things ended up, and on the inside Itachi heaves a sigh of relief. Uzumaki Naruto isn't captured and Sasuke stays alive – in a coma, maybe, but alive.

There is no new Hokage yet, but Itachi had fulfilled some of his duty.

That night, the mark burns a little less and he stares at it, confused, until the man comes.

"Hating yourself a little less now?" he asks, almost idle, and the fire of his eyes isn't quite as all consuming as before.

"What?" Itachi asks and then shakes his head. "What _are you_?"

"A memory. Manifestation. Hint of genetic legacy," the man shrugs, coming closer. "Little bit of this and little bit of that. I linger in Chakra, and I manifest through people sometimes. Rarely, but… it happens."

He takes Itachi's hand and spreads his fingers out, to reveal the lightning mark. He runs an almost gentle finger over it. "I'm not the one who burns," he adds. "And I don't have any reason to hurt you. You're my summoner, after all."

Itachi stares at the mark, as it turns green under the man's touch. "I don't hate myself," he says slowly.

"Don't you?" the man asks, smiling. "I suppose that's a start."

Nothing burns that night.


	10. Matter of the Mind (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by slakenscolin: Not really a shipping prompt but how about Itachi trying to use Tsukuyomi on Harry but Harry uses Occlumency/Legilimency to turn the tables.

Harry didn't even get a chance to react before he was drawn into the attacker's mind. The situation was definitely a new one – usually it was the other way around, usually people tried to get into _his mind_ so it threw him, so much so that he didn't even fight as he was pinned up on a cross of all things.

"Okay then," he said slowly, looking around. Everything was red and dark and gloomy and the force of the mind around him was _overwhelming_. It wasn't quite legilimency – okay it wasn't like legilimency _at all_. This was something else – this was someone using their own head as a trap. It was almost impressive. Kind of stupid when used against him, but impressive.

"You're in my world, now," the attacker said and then he was in front of Harry, cool as a cucumber. "I have absolute control over every aspect of this space, I can even stretch the time here however I please. A second outside is an eternity here," he added, and a sword appeared into his hand. "You may struggle, but it will do you no good."

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Alright," he said, shifting his shoulders a bit. "And you brought me here why?"

"You heard too much. I don't know how you hid your presence, it doesn't matter. What you know, you will take with you to your grave," the assailant said.

"Oh," Harry said nodded slowly. He had wanted to be left alone so he had donned some notice me not charms – only to have his little bubble of privacy invaded. "It's not my fault you decided to talk about your secret plans in a semi public place," he said.

"Regardless," the black haired, red eyed man said, and lifted the sword, getting ready to plunge it into Harry's stomach.

Well, if that was what he wanted to play, then sure. Harry would play.

He lifted his chin a bit and slammed his mental shields down and between himself and the man. They grew with a great rumbling sound from stone and metal, wrapping around him and shattering the cross he was pinned on, letting him drop down and to the bloodstained ground. The world around him coiled with surprise and he could feel the blades coming in, popping into existence, littering the air, coming down. Without having any intention of letting them hit, he switched from defence to all out offence and let his shield _spread_. The labyrinth of his occlumency went out like a ripple, or a shock wave, stretching and hiding him in its complicated folds.

For a while the whole bloodstained world rumbled and shook, until the labyrinth had taken over the entire world around him. Then it was still and quiet, the labyrinth settling down on the bloodstained ground, growing still. At the heart of it, Harry smiled and then jumped up and into the air.

The red eyed assailant was now trapped in the labyrinth below, looking confused and horrified. Harry landed on the edge of the labyrinth's wall just above him and looked down at him interestedly.

"When you invite someone into your mind oh so graciously, you really should try and see who you're giving such access to," he said while the man stared at him. "Your mind's strong, I grant you that. But I think you're a little too used to attacking."

"What are you doing?!" the man demanded, trying to jump, only to find gravity's hold harsher on him, the walls turning to polished marble around him, impossible to climb.

"Taking over your mind, obviously," Harry answered, peering into the distance where the labyrinth was growing into towers and spires, the castle of Hogwarts blooming around them. "Not to worry, I can undo it. You're going to have to answer a couple of questions first."

"I won't," the man said, scowling. "This is still my mind, you can't hurt me here," he added.

"Oh, I don't have to," Harry said, smiling. "Your mind is right here, and I'm almost done enveloping it in mine."

The man, Itachi, wasn't at all happy to have his mind suddenly over taken, but really. He should've seen it coming – and even if he hadn't, he definitely deserved what he got. Harry ignored him, traversed from tower to tower where his labyrinth had captured the man's knowledge, and then riffling through Itachi's knowledge and memories at leisure until he had a firm grasp on the man's background and personality.

"You're an interesting one, aren't you?" Harry mused, looking down at the wary looking traitor, spy, mass murderer and perhaps one of the most loyal men he had ever met. Even Snape had nothing on this man's devotion to the Hokage, who apparently wasn't even alive anymore.

"What are you going to do?" Itachi demanded.

"I don't know yet," Harry said and checked his watch. "We've been here only for a couple fractions of a second though. We have plenty of time to find out, don't we?"


	11. Breaking (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by blacknosugarh: Harry Potter x Naruto, Sometimes you need a break  
> (Harry/Itachi with bdsm)

The first time they met, Itachi was trying to take the bounty on Harry's head. Harry took him down with a well placed tripping hex and body bind and pretty much sat on him while finishing his after noon lunch and tea before leaving the man on the field, to wait for the spell to dissolve. Itachi, despite struggling furiously through the whole thing, never said a word.

The second time they met, Itachi was still trying to take the bounty. He was warier this time and kept his distance, but all his attacks died on Harry's shield and in the end he had to come close. Harry put a petrificus on him and finished his book while using the petrified man's stomach for a pillow. After a while Itachi even stopped struggling.

The third time Itachi came at him knife first and Harry had to knock him out for a while. When Itachi woke up, Harry was juggling his kunai in boredom, and the man was in a body bind once more.

The fourth time, Itachi tried to use jutsu on him with little effect and Harry used a tree's roots to bind him down. There was something suspicious about it this time, because Harry knew that _Itachi_ knew that Jutsu had little effect on his shield. It was particularly stupid of the man to use them, so why had he?

The fifth time Harry wasn't entirely sure if Itachi was even trying anymore – taking him down this time was pitifully easy, and while the man lay wrapped in chains on the ground, Harry considered him a bit more curiously. Of all the bounty hunters that had come after him, he had thought Itachi was the most tenacious – he was the only one who had found him more than once.

The sixth time he _knew for a fact_ the man wasn't trying, because Itachi just walked up to him and _followed him_ until Harry relented and petrified him.

"You're _weird_ ," Harry commented, sitting down beside the man while Itachi relaxed into the hold of the spell.

The seventh time, Itachi broke into his room at an inn in the middle of the night and Harry just grunted, threw his bound up arse onto the bed and went back to sleep. In the morning Itachi was long gone, Harry himself was neither captured nor dead. And then he got it.

The eight time Itachi came to him, Harry didn't bind him – he turned him weightless and made him float, helpless, in the air. When Itachi fought against that, scowling in annoyance, Harry brought him back down to the ground – and then slowly made him heavier, until he couldn't lift his arms or legs, watching how the struggles ceases, how Itachi relaxed. He bound the man's arms in rock shackles and sank his feet into the ground until they were trapped, he wrapped a collar of vines and branches around his throat and watched silently how the man went completely slack.

The ninth time Itachi came, Harry walked up to him and just put a collar around his throat, and then watched how the man just dropped in front of him. Harry bound his hands behind his back and watched with satisfaction how Itachi melted into it, leaning his head down. The man was a bit screwed up in the head, probably. That didn't make the sight of his hair slipping past his neck, baring the vulnerable nape, any less pretty.

The tenth time Harry held him down for the most of the night with just his hands, Itachi's face smashed into the pillow, his thighs knocked apart. Pretty didn't even begin to cover it.


	12. Contracted (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by tsuyuhime: Harry healing Itachi of his disease despite initial protests

Harry looked down at the man lying on the table, out of it and still bleeding from mouth and eyes and ears. Then he looked up at Pein, who returned the gaze with his usual absolute lack of expression. "You sure about this?" Harry asked slowly. "Itachi's been refusing this for years now."

"It's come to the point where it's either this or he'll die in the field. I can't risk that," Pein answered and glanced down. "I won't lose any of them."

Harry shook his head, resting his hands at his hips and looking at Itachi. And to think Akatsuki thought Pein didn't care for them. "Fine," he said. "I'm not taking the responsibility for his reaction."

"That's fine," Pein nodded. "Heal him."

"But on your head be it, then," Harry nodded and got to work.

Itachi's head was a mire of injury, corpses of brain cells and clutters of dead brain matter. Harry worked slowly through it, healing bit by bit, feeding magic in and taking injury and decay out. Distantly he was aware of the feel of Death backing away, bit by bit, as Itachi's lifespan slowly lengthened, but he ignored that and worked his way up the optic nerve and into the ticking time bomb that was the Sharingan eyes.

He and Death had a complicated relationship which mostly revolved around them mutually pretending that the other wasn't there.

There was no way to _fix_ the Sharingan, not really. The eyes were ultimately flawed on the base level – there was simply no way to heal something that had such fundamental design errors. No, the only way to heal Itachi, without inserting someone else's eyes into him, was to simply… remove the eyes. Or, those choice bits that made them into the Sharingan eyes – and the underlying Mangekyo with them.

It took him hours. By the time he returned to his body, Pein was gone and Itachi had stopped bleeding. The eyes beneath the man's surprisingly long lashes were now black, and would remain black until he died.

The man was staring at him with a silent, flat, hopeless expression.

"Sorry," Harry murmured, examining the now healed eyes, checking the cones. There was still some scarring, but he fed a bit more power into them, coaxing them to rejuvenate and repair themselves. "I'm in Pein's dept. When he tells me to jump, I won't even ask how high, I'll just jump. How do they feel?"

"Useless," Itachi answered and closed his eyes. "Mundane, powerless and useless."

"I imagine they would," Harry agreed and leaned back, to let Itachi sit up on the table. "But your vision should be better now."

Itachi didn't answer, just stared at his hands for a long moment before looking at Harry over his shoulder. "I don't suppose you can give them back to me?"

Harry shook his head. "I didn't take them. I erased them," he answered. "Along with your brain injuries, which by the way you're welcome. What I do can't be undone, Itachi. You know that."

The Akatsuki member – its youngest member, really – looked away, scowling. "I don't understand why he would. I'm not going to be much use now. All my techniques are based on the Sharingan, the Mangekyo –"

"You're a genius, Itachi. That's what all your techniques are based on. The eyes are, or were, just a useful tool. Your brain is what made use of them," Harry answered. "Pein knows that. And _that_ is what he doesn't want to loose."

The Uchiha said nothing, just bowed his head for a moment. "It's easy for you to say. And him. His eyes are _perfect_."

Harry snorted at that. "No such thing," he answered, and patted the younger man's shoulder. "Come on. I'll make you some dinner. Besides, there's something we need to talk out."

"What?" Itachi frowned, looking at him.

"You know there are side effects to my healing. Harry shrugged. "Especially when it comes to the head and brain and tricky organs like the eyes.

Itachi sighed and stood up. "If I end up growing horns –"

Harry laughed. "It might happen, I won't deny it. I'd worry about ending up seeing into the future, if I were you."

"What?"

"I put things into people, to make up for the missing bits. Same with you," Harry said, giving him a pointed look. "And most of my patch up work is in your eyes now. I had to replace the Sharingan with something, after all.


	13. Destinied Meetings (Sherlock)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by desert-poet: Harry and mycroft meet as children

Harry met Mycroft when he had just turned eleven, and Mycroft was just a little over twenty. Sometime later on he wondered how things might've gone if he hadn't – and usually he figured it was probably a good thing that he did. Just by meeting Mycroft, Harry became a little better prepared for magic.

He also became a spy.

"It's not much of a task, really," the young man said to the boy, looking horribly out of place in the playground in Little Whinging. He wore a suit and had shiny shoes and his hair was slicked back. "You could think of it as having a pen pal on this side, really."

"A pen pal who pays me to write letters," Harry said, lifting his eyebrows.

"Why, yes. Those are the best sort of pen pals," Mycroft assured him with a fleeting, awkward smile. "I understand that you have a vault of no meagre size, but this would be solely on this side, in an _actual_ bank. It will supply you some security in the future, make sure that you're not… dependant… of your family here."

Harry had to admit, he liked that bit.

"Also, we will ensure your safety and should it become necessary, we will extract you," Mycroft added. "Both from here and there."

"You'd come and take me away?" Harry asked.

"If you needed it, yes."

Harry signed the confidentiality contract without further questions.

In his first year as Mycroft's spy in the magical world, he didn't do much, really. Every weekend, he wrote a letter with the specific codes Mycroft had told him to learn. To anyone looking on it would've looked like a letter to an ignorant muggle friend, lies about Harry's life in fictional muggle school. In reality, it was littered with data about the students and teachers, the size of the castle and the lessons, the subjects, the situation inside the school – the inter-house politics – and of course the situation outside the school. He got rather good at slipping in code words into meaningless pleasantries and could fit a pretty sum of facts into a page of nonsense.

In return, Mycroft wrote him back just as meaningless and meaningful letters, playing the part of an ignorant muggle boy splendidly while coding his letters with sharp precision. Under Mycroft's orders Harry investigated the third floor corridor – without ever actually stepping a foot there. He spied on the teachers – more so after he received the invisibility cloak. He even did a bit of personality analysis after Mycroft sent him a book about it, and came to the conclusion that Quirrell was probably not a very good man.

The thing with the Philosopher's Stone wasn't in Mycroft's designs – and the man let his dissatisfaction be felt very clearly for the duration of Harry's stay in Hogwarts that year. Harry dreaded the return to the muggle world – fearing what Mycroft would say face to face, when his letters were already sharp enough to cause cuts – but Mycroft had other ideas.

"Self-defence lessons?" Harry asked with disbelief, looking at the many summer courses in Surrey that he had, apparently, been enrolled in.

"Yes. Hop to it," the man said, and so Harry began learning hand to hand combat, among other things.

Thanks to the lessons, though, Harry's second year went a bit better – though Mycroft was not happy about the Basilisk thing.

"What was I supposed to do, leave it be? Let Tom kill Ginny? Let the snake keep going around, maybe even finally manage to kill someone?"

"You should've used your head and not gone into the trap he laid out for you head first!" Mycroft said, and slapped more courses in his hands. Most of them were more of what had begun the previous summer. Others weren't. The first aid Harry could understand. The other…

"What's this?" Harry asked, lifting one of them.

"Paintball club," Mycroft said. "You'll be attending their sessions every weekend until the end of the summer. I've made special allowances for you."

Special allowances meant that, while usually the club's paintball matches were between two groups, Harry made a third group – alone. He was singled out instantly and brutally, and for the first two weekends he ended up splattered head to toe and very bruised. By the third week, he was cursing Mycroft's existence, but unwilling to give up. Instead, he began doing what Mycroft obviously wanted him to do – he began to strategize and exercise caution.

He survived his very last session clean and un-hit – and he had even taken down lot of people while at it. The club members congratulated him, patting him on the back and smearing him with paint regardless, but it was still a good feeling to succeed. A viciously good feeling.

"Satisfied?" Harry asked when Mycroft met him later.

"Moderately so," Mycroft said, and took him to a two day intensive course from what had to be a MI5 spy. It was about gun care, assembly, and of course, use. Harry passed it with moderate results and with a brand new Beretta 21A Bobcat to his name.

Harry's third year was a bit more serious than the previous ones. It took him almost a month to get used to the feel of the hidden holster under his robes, the pocket sized semi-automatic tucked into his armpit, and even after that he was constantly hyper aware of it until he learned concealment and disillusion charms, just to get some peace of mind. It would've been a disaster if anyone had seen him with it.

He almost killed his godfather with the little gun. He was only saved by the fact that Professor Lupin knew what the gun was, and managed to put up a shield in time. The two wizards were rather more keen on their explanations afterwards. Later, after almost shooting Snape, and stealing Hermione Granger's little time turner for the night, Harry used the Bobcat to kill fourteen dementors – and he relished each and every shot.

"Professor Lupin wanted to take the gun away from me. Sirius persuaded him otherwise," Harry said later that summer to Mycroft, who was going over his far more detailed report of the school year.

"So these dementors aren't as immortal as previously assumed," he murmured.

"Nope – and they have thin skulls. Single shot took them out," Harry shrugged.

He had more gun lessons that summer, a little more hand to hand too, and went back to school with a lot more bullets than the previous year. It was a pity that he couldn't use them on the Goblet of Fire after it spat out his name – or the dragon, when he was set to face against it – though he had enough attack spells under his belt for that, thanks to both Mycroft and Sirius Black, who had many suggestions. The Bobcat was useless in the lake too, but it made going through the labyrinth a _cinch_.

It made damn quick work of the Death Eaters too. And Voldemort, it turned out, was not immortal after all.

"Holy _crap_ ," Cedric muttered while Harry slammed in another magazine. "Potter, is that a _muggle gun_?"

"No. It's _my_ gun," Harry answered, keeping the gun carefully aimed at the downed Death Eaters. "Now how the hell do we get back to Hogwarts…"

They couldn't – the portkey was one way and they had no idea where they even were. In the end, Harry shed his champions robes, and headed to the nearest muggle settlement to see if he could make a phone call. Mycroft answered on the first ring.

"You… killed Voldemort and his Death Eaters?" the man asked after Harry had finished reporting – all in code, of course, no need to shock the suspiciously staring muggle couple, hovering in the doorway.

"Yeah, we got a bit lost, our _friends_ sort of snatched us up and there was nothing else we could do," Harry answered. "I don't suppose you could come pick us up?"

Mycroft was there inside an hour – with a helicopter. Cedric was very speechless.

"Fun year so far?" the man asked.

"It's been entertaining," Harry said, and knocked Cedric out with a casual spell before twiddling with the boy's memory a bit, inserting in its place a hazy recollection of a Portkey throwing them around. "How close to Hogwarts can you get us?"

"Fourteen miles off," Mycroft said, almost apologetic. "Any closer and we risk detection."

"Fourteen miles is fine," Harry said and after Mycroft had dropped him and the now unconscious Cedric off in order to go and attend to the scene of Dead Death Eaters and Their Dead Leader, Harry hoisted Cedric up into a fireman's carry and began jogging back to Hogwarts.

In his fifth year, Harry entered the school with the Bobcat tugged into a boot and with a new Browning L9A1 in his shoulder holster. It was, sadly, a mostly uneventful year – Harry spent most of it going over Wizarding politics and poisons and sleeping in Defence Against the Dark Art's classes, though the latter was mostly just to piss Snape off. He finished the year by breaking Malfoy's wrist – pure accident, honestly, it wasn't Harry's fault the prick had been a… a prick all year. Though, granted, someone had shot the prick's dad at point blank range…

"There was a ministry investigation, of course – it went on all year. For some reason they think whoever killed all the death eaters might be in Hogwarts. Who knows why," Harry said to Mycroft.

"Yes, so you have reported," the man agreed, going over his reports. "No fall back from Voldemort's resurrection and death, hm."

"I don't think anyone realised that it was him. I mean. There wasn't much of his face left," Harry mused, reminiscing. "Or if they did realise who it was, they pretended not to."

He spent most of that summer with Sirius – Mycroft having moved the majority of Harry's summer classes to London, conveniently enough. Since the event with the Death Eaters wasn't classified, precisely – just need to know – Harry relayed what he had done to his godfather. He got drunk for the first time that night, with Sirius pouring every shot. It was a good summer.

Harry's sixth year was annoying. There was a ministry woman flouncing about in Hogwarts and Dumbledore was being… weird. For the hell of it Harry fawned and flattered the ministry woman, leeching information about Wizarding politics off her to report to Mycroft, right up until he did something wrong and then she gave him lines to write. With a _Blood Quill_.

The woman had an unfortunate accident later that week. Tripped down the stairs, broke her neck, will never walk again. _Tragic_.

"I think it's time for you to come out of the school," Mycroft decided, informing him through a two way mirror Sirius had been nice enough to buy them. "You're starting to do more harm than good there. Get your NEWTs done this year, graduate early, and we'll see what we'll do next."

"Thank fucking god," Harry answered vehemently, and wrote his NEWTs later that month.

Two years and some intensive training later, Harry "returned" to the Wizarding world after his supposed sabbatical, and joined the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as a trainee Hit Wizard just in time for rumours of Horcruxes and Voldemort's resurrection to arise.

"Apparently, the bastard had _several_ Horcruxes. No one knows how many yet, but they think there will be multiple resurrections. This is going to be _fun_ ," he said to Mycroft later

"Perhaps I recruited you too early," Mycroft sighed. Harry just grinned.


	14. Ever After (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by ryulabird: HP/Naruto; drunk one night stand; anyone I guess…  
> (Jiraiya/Remus/Nymphadora)

_'Well here's something I thought wouldn't happen again,'_ Jiraiya thought, staring at the ceiling somewhere above him. For one, he hadn't expected to be able to get drunk again, what with being dead and all. And he certainly hadn't expected to get laid again, _what with being dead and all._ In the _afterlife_ with a bunch of _dead people_.

But apparently the afterlife didn't work quite the way he had assumed. There wasn't booze, precisely, but there was something even better – raw, condensed emotion bottled and traded somewhat illegally. Intoxication was, just after bliss, pleasure, and happiness, one of the most highly sought out emotions in the afterlife. Or was it an emotion? More of a mental state, really.

"Stop thinking," the body beside Jiraiya's grumbled, turning and throwing an arm around his waist. "It's too bloody early."

Yet another thing one didn't expect from the afterlife. _Time_. "I'm not sure about that," Jiraiya noted, turning his eyes blearily to a nearby window. It was positively _sunny_ outside. "Looks like it's past midday."

"Fuck midday," the woman grumbled.

"Are you two still in bed?" a third voice, a male this time, said. Jiraiya looked up with alarm and saw a man in a dull brown robe, standing by the doorway with his arms folded, a look of amusement on his face. "I've tea for you, and food too, if you feel like getting up."

"Go to hell," the woman grumbled. "You and your bloody werewolf physique and your alcohol tolerance and your…" her voice trailed away.

"It wasn't even alcohol, you know?" Laughing, the man came forward and began to pry the woman off of Jiraiya, seemingly not at all concerned that Jiraiya was there. "Come on, you. Breakfast away. And you – uh. Sorry, didn't catch your name yesterday," the man said, turning to look at Jiraiya.

"Uh. It's Jiraiya," the legendary hermit answered awkwardly.

"Remus, and this lump of uselessness here is Nymphadora, my wife," the man said, all the while lifting the woman up, and to his shoulder, caveman style, ignoring her grumbling and the way she weakly swatted at his backside. "Come on, Jiraiya. There's enough for you too."

Jiraiya stared after the couple as Remus carried his wife off. So it was one of _those_ nights, he mused, and wondered if he ought to groan or pat himself on the back. They, Remus and Nymphadora, were both young and not too hard on the eyes. Not bad, for a man of his age.

Did age still matter in the afterlife?

"Oh, whatever. It's too early for this," he sighed and got up. Though Remus hadn't seemed to mind the fact that his wife was completely without a shred of clothing, Jiraiya doubted it applied to him as well, so he fished around the floor until he found his trousers and pulled them on. He gave up on the shirt after half a minute of searching and then followed his hosts out of the bedroom.

They had a nice house. Well, almost everyone had a nice house in the afterlife, at least those who wanted houses. Everyone had their _dream_ home, and Remus' and Nymphadora’s dreams were very pleasant. The living room was lit entirely by the floor to ceiling windows and outside there was a garden, absolutely bursting with flowering plants. Everything was some shade of gold or bronze or something in-between – everything was sunny, warm, and happy. There was not a single dark corner in the living room, and the theme continued in the kitchen, where Remus had propped his younger wife against the counter with his hips and was feeding her toast and eggs.

"Help yourself," the man said with a smile, and in the sunlight Jiraiya could see the healed scars – the almost healed misery and darkness – on the man. Somehow, he was sure that the house was mostly his dream, with its warmth and glow and welcoming atmosphere.

He had to wonder what kind of life Remus must've had, for his afterlife to be like this. And with all this, with a house like this, with a wife like Nymphadora, why Jiraiya was here.

"So," Jiraiya started awkwardly. "About last night…"

"Can't remember a thing, can you?" Remus asked, lifting the still completely naked Nymphadora to sit on the kitchen counter. "That would be this idiot's fault," he said, kissing the woman gently. "Tried to drink me under the table again."

"One day, Moony, I'll succeed," she answered, wrapping an arm around the man's shoulders and then turning to look at Jiraiya. The way her eyes trailed down was definitely appreciative. "Hey, big-guy," she said with a dopey smile. "You look fine."

"Ouch," Remus complained.

"You look fine too, honey, but you don't have his abs," Nymphadora said.

Remus turned to Jiraiya too, and his eyes were just as appreciative. "True," he said wistfully. "They're very fine aren't they?"

Jiraiya couldn't help but smile at that. The two of them seemed very… happy. "So you two do this often?" he asked, amused.

"Not often enough," Remus hummed.

"We could do it again. Right now," Nymphadora suggested.

Jiraiya laughed at that, all the while wondering about their lives, about how young they both were. Nymphadora couldn't be thirty. To die that young – and so close to each other. Or had they died together? Was this happy, sunny home of theirs compensation, or distraction?

Well, who was he to judge? He didn't have a home in the afterlife. He never had had a dream house. And he probably wouldn't either, not before Orochimaru and Tsunade joined him. When that happened, well. They hadn't had plans for a house – they had planned for a _nation_. A nation which in the real world would never work out. But here? Well.

And to think, Orochimaru wanted to be immortal.


	15. Winship (Hobbit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by twoampostman: Harry ends up in Erebor, or at any point through the Hobbit. He is a dragon animagus.

"That's disgusting," Smaug said after Harry had finished telling him his tale. "I can see why you decided to become a dragon instead. Who in their right minds would want to stay _human_? They don't even taste very good."

"I wouldn't know," Harry answered, sitting back on his haunches. He didn't really prefer one form over another – though in Smaug's vastly larger presence, the draconic form definitely had its advantages. It was mostly that after he had fallen into the hole that had spat him out in Smaug's hall, he hadn't been able to shift back. No need for Smaug to know that, though. "I've never eaten a human."

"You haven't? You're not missing out on much – but we could go and snatch up a couple, see how well you like them," Smaug said thoughtfully, scratching at his jewel encrusted chest. "There's not much else around here to eat, to be honest. All the herds are gone."

"Did you eat them all?" Harry asked, incredulous. "Ever heard of moderation?"

"They were just _there_. And I was hungry," Smaug said, sighing and sliding off his pile of gold. "Now I have to fly further and further to eat and it is getting rather bothersome."

Harry sighed. "Well, if you've eaten this whole place out and there are just humans about, I'm not staying here," he said. "I _was_ a human and I have no intention of being a cannibal. Never mind if it's technically correct or not. I want the sort of food that I share as little genes with as possible," he said, shuddering. "So, after a bit of a nap I think I'll just fly off."

Smaug gave him a displeased, stubborn look. "But you only just arrived," he said. "It gets dreadfully dull around here. Stay for a while – I'll find some food that's not man. Would elf do?"

"No, elf would not do. I want mutton. Or beef. Or lamb. Something that's not walking on two legs and _talking_ ," Harry said with a shudder that rattled his scales. Then he leaned back a bit. "If there are humans and elves about though, what do _they_ eat?" he asked.

"They have pigs and such, but I can't get them anymore – they never leave them unguarded and it's extremely tedious, trying to get arrows out of my hide," Smaug muttered, nosing at his flank where there was a ragged tear between two jewels.

Harry eyed the bigger dragon, then looked around and then back at Smaug. "Have you thought of _buying_ your food?" he asked.

It took him almost four days to persuade Smaug on the concept. In the end, though, the big dragon allowed Harry to fly off with a fist full of small golden coins – a few of which Harry scattered over the little town by the lake side, before settling down further away to wait. The humans of the town were very confused, judging by the shouts that came up, and a few arrows were even shot at Harry's direction – he blocked them easily with a shielding charm.

It was almost night before a couple of brave souls, armoured from head to toe and wielding lances, dared to come within shouting distance. "What do you want, o great lizard?" one of them shouted.

"To talk with a merchant, o great toaster oven," Harry snorted at him, and the men fled screaming into the town. "For Merlin's sake," he muttered.

He had to wait until the next morning before some brave – or insane, one or the other – merchant from the town ventured out. "What does a dragon of the LonelyMountain want that he can't get from the mountain itself?" the merchant asked.

"Food, mainly," Harry said and scattered the coins he still had into the ground before him. "I want the biggest herd of something _edible_ grazing around the mountain as soon as possible, and I'll pay gold for every animal. Oh and I'll need some people to tend to it, they'll be paid too. In return, I'll – and Smaug too, of course –swear not to eat any people, elves or whatnot, and not destroy any property."

The merchant eyed him dubiously. "You want to… pay… for food," he asked. "Why not just steal it?"

"Too tedious. Why work at it when you can pay others to work for you?" Harry shrugged. "The mountain certainly has enough riches for it. So, merchant, are you interested?" he asked.

The man stroked his beard thoughtfully. "How big a herd? Any particular animal?"

"Five hundred strong should do for a start. Any animal big enough to make a meal for a dragon should do – though lamb is kind of annoying to eat until someone shears it first," Harry mused. "I wouldn't mind having my cows skinned either. Actually, having some cooked food would be nice. Hmmm…"

He and the merchant – and then the merchant friends, some herders and eventually a few local farmers, ended up haggling and making plans all week. It took a while for the people to get used to dealing with a dragon, but it helped that Harry was much smaller and much more polite than Smaug was – and that he had a fistful of gold. In the end, Harry returned to the mountain without said gold, replaced by the good will of the people and two freshly butchered and skinned cows. And of course a plan of what would probably be a huge undertaking.

"So there will be more food?" Smaug asked when Harry presented him with the bloodless cow. "Oh. It's… skinless," the bigger dragon said.

"Welcome to the pleasures of having men working for you – no skin stuck between your teeth. Also, no blood splattering everywhere," Harry answered.

The animals started coming in later that week. First horses which Harry didn't let Smaug attack – they were the breeding stock, claws off. Then, slower, the cows and the pigs. "It will take some time to get the numbers up to your liking," the herders said when Harry inspected the animals. "We'll have some goats and sheep coming in too, and some lads are talking about setting up a pen for some hares, if you wouldn't mind having a meal of many bites."

"Not at all. Chickens wouldn't go amiss either," Harry said, satisfied. "So, do you need a hand with anything? Let me tell you, I am _amazing_ at ploughing fields and knocking down trees.

That brought a mighty glint in the eyes of the farmers, and for a while Harry had the time of his life, tearing trees of their roots and piling them for the loggers, before raking a swathe of land with his claws and tail and shucking rocks off to make way for what would soon be farm fields. He even took part in the process of building the farm houses, when things moved to that point.

It took almost two years to get everything really going, but when it did, it was amazing. Even Smaug came out every now and then, to look down on the fields of wheat and barley and hay, and the large herds, carefully tended to by people in _their_ employ. What Harry found the best of all of it was the _smell_ though. He had managed to rope a couple of cooks into working for him, and now all his food came cooked. Smaug had yet to even try cooked food, but Harry could _feel_ his resolution bending.

"I suppose it's a different kind of richness," the bigger dragon said.

"Gold's not worth much if you only lay on it," Harry shrugged, sitting on his haunches on the Erebor battlements. "Now," he said. "It's time to start setting up taxation," he said.

"Setting up what?" Smaug asked, incredulous.

"Well. It is our – or, well, your – land with lots of people working for you. Most of LakeTown is working for us now. So, basically, we own them," Harry said. "It's not right that we only pay them – they ought to pay back for what we – by which I mean me – have done for them. I helped them rebuild and flourish – I even built a school for them. I deserve taxes."

"Fine. Go get your taxes if you want them so much," Smaug said, rolling his eyes. "I'm going back to sleep."

"Fine. I will," Harry said with dignity, and took flight.

By the time Smaug woke up again, Harry was the Governor of Erebor, and they had an actual government. Smaug was technically the King Under the Mountain, but everyone knew Harry was the one who actually minded things. LakeTown had largely moved into the ruined city of Dale – which they were rebuilding with Harry's help.

"We're also getting more people," Harry said, off hand. "The word's spreading that people here live under the protection of a benevolent dragon. I've taken out some orc and troll patrols for them, and they liked that. Stuff like that hasn't happened in eons and people like the idea of a guardian dragon, it turns out."

"The changes you've made," Smaug murmured with disgust. "How very active and noisy this place has become."

"Yes. Isn't it wonderful?" Harry answered with a toothy dragon grin. "Oh yeah, and I met with the elf king last month. He is a bit of a prick. You would like him."

Later that year, a party of dwarves came along to demand their mountain back. Harry grinned at them over the battlements. "Finders keepers," he said, sticking out his tongue. "But I'm open to discuss immigration, if you feel like moving back in. We could use people to work the mines."


	16. Burning (FFVII)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by fandomwho: HP/FFVII crossover where Harry, tired of his life in England, travels to a different dimension and ends up raising Sephiroth

Harry had been living in his new world for a while now, and he had to say… it sucked. He hadn't even realised that he had gotten used to and taken advantage of the infrastructure on Earth and the whole shebang of government. Not before he had landed on his new world because here governmental services – legal, law enforcement, health care and so on – just didn't _exist_. Mainly because the world – Gaia – had no _government._

Well, there was Wutai, but that didn't help much since it was a monarchy and had even _less_ infrastructure than the rest of the planet.

Gaia was the dream world of all those people who wrote about dystopias and stuff. Gaia was _the_ corporation dystopia, ruled by a single business, ShinRa Electric Power Company, and it wasn't even a corporation. It was a _family business_ that had somehow taken over an entire world. And the results certainly lived up to all the nightmares of earth dystopian fanatics.

There was no law enforcement left, outside Wutai. What they had instead was "ShinRa business". Which basically meant that ShinRa was always right, those who were wrong often got killed by mysterious or not so mysterious ways and if the matter at hand had nothing to do with ShinRa or ShinRa wasn't interested, then ShinRa wasn't involved. At all. In any way. There could be a drug war going on in the middle of Midgar killing people left and right – and as long as it didn't hinder ShinRa business, ShinRa just looked elsewhere while people killed each other under its nose.

No health care either – except it was a bit worse than that. Any person who got education above a nurse tended to get swept away by ShinRa to work for them, whether they liked it or not. What was left was a bunch of under educated people trying to keep the rest of the planet together and healthy, never with good results. The planet was constantly swept by diseases and viral infections – Gaia had four flu seasons per year, sometimes six. And no one did a thing about it. If you got ill? You were likely to die within the year. Or month. Or _day_.

And legal? No such thing as law. Just, once again, ShinRa business. You got robbed, swindled, screwed over by someone else? Tough luck because there was no one out there who gave a single crap.

The list of the Things That Were Wrong With Gaia went on and on. And Harry was _stuck_ here, the door behind him slammed shut and bolted tight. No way out – except maybe for death, and at twenty two he was far too young and far too pretty to die. So he was stuck, watching the world around him in increasing horror and disgust, as ShinRa grew more and more powerful, and the planet around it withered. Sometimes rather literally.

He was very tempted to join AVALANCHE a bunch of times, just for the chance to bomb ShinRa HQ in Midgar. He wasn't stupid or suicidal though – and his magic was… weird here. So he kept his head down and when the opportunity presented itself, he hightailed the hell out of dodge.

The rest of Gaia wasn't any better, but there were spots of nature here and there where it seemed like maybe ShinRa hadn't ruined the place altogether – except, of course it had. ShinRa had resorts and locales, offices and endless, overflowing laboratories _everywhere_. And Midgar wasn't even the only town ShinRa had built – there was Junon too, the very sight of which made Harry uneasy. The whole town was a _gun_. A gun aimed at whom? Wutai? Wutai was on the other side of the Western Continent! And for that matter, the curvature of the planet made firing a laser cannon like the Junon cannon rather ridiculous, if the aim _was_ Wutai. If not, then _what_? The ocean? The Western Continent, which is also in ShinRa's possession?

Deciding that ShinRa and the East were both nuts, Harry headed off to the Western Continent, regardless of the fact that it seemed to be in the sights of a big ass cannon. The West was, if at all possible, even worse off than the East. A lot of the continent was just cold and dead, ravaged by previous generations of people wreaking havoc. Where it was lively, it was also poisonous – Gongaga was not Harry's favourite place. Neither was Corel, or Gold Saucer. CosmoCanyon was nice, except, well, it lacked pretty much everything from water to food and was generally a tough place to live.

So, Harry ended up in Nibelheim – which was as unfriendly as the rest, but it had food and water and space. It also had a _ShinRa Mansion_ where who knew what sorts of experiments were being performed. The townsfolk had a lot to say about what was going on in the ShinRaMansion. A lot, and it would've been easier to handle if every Merlin damned word hadn't rang true.

Experiments on babies seemed just like the sort of things ShinRa would do. Super soldiers? Yep, right up ShinRa's alley. Super Soldier Babies? Just a matter of course.

Harry listened to the whispering of the townsfolk and the snide bragging of the soldiers and scientists from the mansion, whenever they came to the town, for a couple of weeks. "Eight months old, and he soaks up Mako like a sponge," one of the scientists said, proud. "Sephiroth really is Professor Hojo's masterpiece!"

"I'd agree, if the brat didn't scream so much all the time," another said. "We really need to figure out how to knock him out for the procedures."

And something in Harry snapped.

Sixteen hours later, he had an infant boy with silver hair and green eyes held gently against his chest by one arm, and one Vincent Valentine slung over his shoulder, supported by the other arm – and behind him the ShinRaMansion was burning merrily. There might've been screams from the scientists and soldiers but… well, honestly, Harry didn't give a crap.

"Fucking Gaia," he grumbled while making his way from the mansion, from Nibelheim – from this messed up civilisation that the insane planet harboured. Some quiet place out of sight, where no one would come across them, that was what he wanted. Out of sight, out of mind – out of reach of manipulations by insane family businesses and mad scientists.

First, though, he needed to go up to the reactor, and blow it up.

 

* * *

 

In the beginning, Vincent was bedridden, but he was aware enough. His left arm was useless, his feet… not quite as responsive as he would like, and his chest ached. That, he could live with. That and the cold wind which their ragged tent did little to quell. The baby tucked under his jacket by their so called saviour was a bit too much, though, but Sephiroth spent most of the time sleeping and whenever he woke up cranky their saviour would be there instantly, sweeping the kid into his arms, so that was alright.

The _building_ process, though, he couldn't wrap his mind around. Grumbling and muttering curses, their supposed saviour made foundations out of stone with a flick of his wrist and somehow, by putting a stick and a pebble together, he managed to grow _walls_. All the while, the foundations were constantly beset by plants and flowers that seemed to be able to grow out from sheer rock. Their saviour kicked and cursed at the plants before pointing outside – and they practically walked away, sulking, to grow out in a wild meadow all around the foundations.

"Fucking _Gaia_ ," seemed to be their saviour's favourite saying, whenever something like that happened. Vincent could see him giving obscene gestures at the plants outside quite a few times. It never made any more sense – that, or how smugly indifferent the plants seemed.

Then the man seemed to weave a roof out of twigs and straws and suddenly, there was a house. Grown from, literally, sticks and stones.

"Right," their saviour said, while feeding Sephiroth with a bottle he had made from shards of what Vincent dearly hoped wasn't Materia, and milk he had somehow created from thin air. "Next, furniture."

He made the furniture mainly from the plants outside – with what looked like _revenge_ on his face. The plants, if they minded, didn't put up a fight – the roots that made Sephiroth's crib all but crawled into the man's hands. With carpets made from grass and curtains weaved from red and gold flowers, tables made from shrubs and chairs from leaves and more twigs, the end result was very… _lively_. Vincent certainly didn't mind it, when his bed was grown from a branch and some cotton flowers, though. It was much more comfortable than the bedroll he had been lying on, before.

"There," their saviour said, satisfied, while making a fire out of nothing in the brand new hearth and settling down on the sofa made from twigs and flowers. "Home sweet home."

Vincent wondered, often, if he was maybe hallucinating everything, the man, the baby, himself – and definitely the house that now stood tall and proud like it _hadn't_ been made largely from nothing. But the pain in his left hand and the strangeness of his feet were all too real. As was Sephiroth's drool, whenever their saviour was too busy to mind the boy and left him with Vincent to be _warm_.

"And Merlin knows that kid needs some proper human contact. Nice ones. That doesn't come with needles. _Merlin's sake_ ," the black haired, green eyed, all too young man grumbled, while stomping away to deal with a pack of Nibel wolves that had settled on the front yard. Right next to the herd of deer that had been there since the first day. "My life is a fucking Disney movie," was the man's summation of the situation. "Fucking _Gaia_."

When Vincent finally felt more like himself – and the cuts on his throat finally healed enough so that he could speak – the first thing he did was to ask who the man was. "Concerned non-citizen," the man answered and held out a hand. "Harry Potter. Welcome to the middle of nowhere. It's in the middle of nowhere, mind you, but it's better than ShinRa, right?"

Vincent couldn't really remember much of his stay in ShinRaMansion, after Hojo had shot him. But he remembered pain, being cut open, needles, and Mako. The scars told their story in gruesome detail. The mangled left hand, the feet with talons belonging to who knows what monsters. The chest, with an autopsy scar running across his chest and down his stomach.

"Much appreciated," he said. "But why? And why…?" he motioned at Sephiroth, sleeping in a sling against the other man's chest.

"Because this place, this world, _sucks_ ," Harry answered with feeling. "Because fuck ShinRa. Because… look at him!" he said, and held up Sephiroth's little hand. It wasn't quite as chubby as one might expect from an infant of less than one year of age. What it was, was scar ridden. Puncture marks ran down the skin, and his little elbow joint was bruised black and blue. "And you too! That, this, none of this is _sane_."

"Okay," Vincent said, more placating than understanding – though he did agree. He had stood up to Hojo for a reason. But he had stood for Lucrecia, not for the baby. But, objectively, he could see how… yes, it wasn't particularly sane. But it was ShinRa. Everyone knew what ShinRa did. Very few did anything about it. Very few _could_.

Harry narrowed his eyes at him, pointing a finger at Vincent's face. "If you don't see the problem here, then you're part of the problem," he said darkly. "Should I have left you with ShinRa?"

"You burned the mansion," Vincent said, recalling the flames only vaguely but Harry had grumbled in dark satisfaction about it a lot of times.

"Yes, I did," Harry agreed. "Should I have left you there?"

Vincent blinked and then shook his head. "I'm grateful you didn't," he said, though it came out more like a question. "But… it's ShinRa."

"ShinRa sucks."

"But –"

"No, no. Repeat after me," Harry ordered, his eyes gleaming with mad hatred. "ShinRa Sucks. Say it."

"ShinRa… sucks?" Vincent said, confused but happy to humour the crazy person. Of course he knew objectively that ShinRa wasn't precisely pleasant, but… it was ShinRa. ShinRa was ShinRa. So what if it… _sucked_? ShinRa was all there was. It wasn't like anyone had much choice in the matter.

Harry narrowed his eyes but shook his head. "You are so brainwashed, it's just sad," he said. "Give me a month and I'll show you how much nicer it is, without a government like that breathing down your neck."

Vincent had no doubt he would. It was a terrifying thought. "Why aside," he said slowly. "How did you do it? This, the rescue, all of it? How did you…?"

He had broken the laws of nature, physics, and magic to do it all, and now that Vincent thought of it… it was all rather terrifying too.

Harry sighed, looking outside their window that he had made from what probably wasn't Materia crystal. Outside, a new tree was growing. It looked a little like an apple tree. It, by all rights, shouldn't have any chance growing this far up in the mountain, but it looked as lively as if it was growing in the Mideel islands. "Fucking Gaia," Harry grumbled.


	17. Shelter (Artemis Fowl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by texasdreamer01: Potter and Artemis Fowl, if you’ve read the series.

"So, is it doable?" Artemis Fowl Senior asked, while Harry inspected the manor grounds thoughtfully.

"It's a bit tricky, thanks to the pre-existing wards and whatever else there's in the soil, but I can work around it – it will probably take a bit longer than first suspected," the wizard answered, crouching down and digging his fingers into the lively, grass and moss covered soil. "This place has seen a lot of action."

"I know. It has history," the businessman answered with a sigh. "And you'll… you'll include that?" he asked, pointing at the rose covered tower not far off from them.

Harry eyed it thoughtfully. The magic around it was thick and overwhelming – not something you could contain easily. "I can try – but I'd rather put up separate wards around the mansion and the tower – otherwise, some security measures I would put around the house won't work. There's too much magic in that tower."

"Alright. Please," Mr. Fowl said, motioning him to follow him to the mansion itself. "We've a room for you in the mansion, for the duration. Anything you need, to get the job done as well as possible."

"Thank you," Harry nodded, and followed his new employer inside.

The next day, the warding began with the preliminary mapping. With an infinite bottle of salt water – with ground amethyst mixed in, Harry walked the edges of the intended wards, making a single unbroken line with the water on the ground, looping it around the mansion. Then he did another line around the rose covered tower – this one with bit of agate and some atlantisite thrown in to try and maintain the overly powerful magical field around the tower.

"So, you're the wizard?" one of the Fowl family bodyguards, a man named Butler, said that evening after Harry had finished the mapping and was in the process of marking where the corners would be.

"That's me," Harry agreed, peering at the map thoughtfully. The Fowl manor was smaller than his usual projects, and usually wouldn't have required as many corner stones, maybe a dozen. But Mr. Fowl was almost literally paying him his weight in gold to make the wards as tight and as secure as possible. With a quick calculation in his head, Harry balanced the mansion wards and the tower wards and began marking what went where in the ward line. Forty eight corner stones for the mansion wards and fourteen for the tower – no, eighteen rather. The extra stones would be necessary to balance out the tower itself.

"And you're going to be doing wards for the mansion?" Butler asked.

"That's the idea," Harry nodded and peered upwards. He'd forgotten to ask how high Mr. Fowl wanted the ward dome. "Do they get a lot of air traffic here?" he asked, while mentally fitting a half sphere around the dome. He could stretch it – he could even make it a cylinder rather than a dome if needed – but perfectly spherical domes were more secure.

"Some," Butler admitted, peering at his map. "We've got a private helipad here and occasionally there will be stiff-winged aircrafts coming in here – it's technically a parking space."

Harry considered that and nodded. Neither was inside the ward line. "I need to talk with Mr. Fowl to make sure there won't be any air traffic coming in or going out while I do the warding – it won't be safe for the aircrafts. Afterwards there will be a no flight zone above the mansion. Maybe about a hundred meters," he said thoughtfully.

Butler frowned at him and then asked, "You do these wards a lot?"

"This'll be my one hundred and forty fifth commission," Harry shrugged and headed back to the mansion.

The second day Harry spent at the Fowl manor, he had two tagalongs – and their bodyguards – with him. Beckett and Myles almost literally hung onto his legs through the whole time Harry walked the ward line, watching him as he took out stones and crystals and applied them to the ground. Harry didn't mind the company, even though the bodyguards staring at him were a bit intimidating.

"Do it again!" Beckett cried every time Harry crushed a crystal in his hands and let the dust of stone and magic seep through his fingers and into the ground.

"Don't do it again – you can't do that, that's not how stones work!" Myles said in deep dissatisfaction.

"Sorry, Myles, there will be more where that came from," Harry smiled at the boys while taking another crystal and unwinding it into a thread of dust in his fingers. The boys oohed at the little string of stone as Harry let one end trail down and _into_ the ground, where it sank beneath the surface until it found the stone Harry had added to the foundation, and hooked onto it. Then, keeping the thread of crystal tight between his fingers, Harry walked to the next future corner stone, and took out another stone to crush and add to the soil.

Like so he mapped the entire mansion, with the fundamentals of the crystal in the corners, and a crystal wire in-between – of course, it wasn't _quite_ wire, it wasn't quite physical, but it did the work. Eventually, the entire mansion was inside a loop of powerful stones. The next day, Harry repeated the process with the rose covered tower, a bit more careful as here the stones were to be closer to each other.

With the foundation laid in crystal and stone, the spell work began on the fifth day. For that Harry politely but pointedly asked for no audience – though the whole Fowl family probably had binoculars out while they watched him walk the ward line.

Each corner got its own spells, a good dozen of them apiece. Harry had to hold all the spells up and functioning while the warding was still happening, each new spell adding into a colossal load that he almost literally lugged around the entire ward line. It had to be done, though, because otherwise the spells might've faded before he made the full circuit.

It meant that he couldn't sleep or stop until the work was done. Which, for a project of forty eight corners, meant a good thirty nine hours of constant spell work.

He finished late the next afternoon, connecting the ward stones and then starting to weave the ward itself from the first link. A foot at a time, the ward grew up and up, arching gracefully into itself until finally, sometime that evening, the ward connected a hundred meters above the Fowl manor.

"Well, that's the first layer," Harry murmured, lying down on the grass and then sleeping for the next twelve hours straight.

In the following four weeks, he repeated the process on the manor and the rose tower a good eight times, building the layers of wards until the Fowl manor was about as secure as anyone could make it, short of making it unplottable. No magical or malevolent entity of even remotely magical nature could enter the mansion without the permission of the family that lived there – meaning the Fowls. The same was true with the rose tower – though Harry had thrown in an extra layer there, to preserve the magical energies contained in and around the tower.

"Is it finished now?" Mrs. Fowl asked, when Harry finished the last ward.

"It's finished," Harry agreed. "I'll need to take a day or so to write down the guidelines and how you can control the wards, but aside from that, it's complete."

"Good. That's very good," Mrs. Fowl nodded with a look of grim determination on her face.

Harry wrote the guide book, binding it in leather so finely tanned that it was almost golden. He had Mr. and Mrs. Fowl sign it in their blood, making it so that only they and whoever they chose could read it – or even see it. Just a bit of extra security, thrown in for the sake of a very paranoid family which Harry had come to rather like during his stay.

Then the work was done. Mr. Fowl paid the price in full in _actual_ gold, Mrs. Fowl thanked Harry formally but with feeling, and Beckett and Myles hugged Harry's legs sadly. Butler walked Harry out of the grounds.

"Will we be seeing you again?" the big man asked.

"No. I did set the wards to repel magic," Harry shrugged. "I won't be coming here again."

The bodyguard nodded with grim satisfaction, shook Harry's hand, and that was that.


	18. Iron Wizard (Iron Man)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by ankhwave: Your little “Iron Wizard” doodle could inspire something? cross Iron Man with HP with some Stark attempting to master or duplicate magic?

At two, Tony could count, read, write, and change the shapes of the gears of his windup toy until they fit the way he wanted them to. He turned a plastic card into a propeller and what had been an awkward body of a toy dog into a sleek cockpit and made what had been a barely entertaining robot dog into a miniature helicopter. His mother laughed and hushed him and told him not to do it again – not unless she was there.

At three, Tony didn't need to add propellers to his toys to make them fly. He could make things zoom around the room just by looking at them – first one thing, then many, then _all of them_. His mother's laughter got a little strained then, her smile stiffer, and she told him, over and over again. _Never when father's home, Tony._

At four, Tony didn't need _anything_ to make toys – and making them fly was child’s play. He could change the colour of his clothing and the shape of his shoes and when he really concentrated, he could turn his little work table into a functional miniature rollercoaster for a train made of plastic caps – instantly melted, reformed, refitted, with perfectly serviceable plastic gear work inside.

At five, Tony's mother took him to meet a strange old man who peered into Tony's face and touched his hands and then pressed the tip of a wooden rod to his forehead and made it shine. Later, Tony could no longer make things change or fly, and his mother looked a little relieved. That year, Tony went to school.

At six, Tony got a box of old gadgets, gears and circuit boards from his mother, who was trying to distract him from the fact that he couldn't _make_ things anymore. He didn't care, not at first. He knew it was her fault, she had stopped it, and he felt betrayed, more so than he did when father promised to be there, and then didn't show for days. She was supposed to be on his side.

At seven, Tony began forgetting, and started twiddling with the circuit boards. The years were long and vast when you were that young, and two years ago was as good as an eternity. The circuit boards, on the other hand, were just there, and it didn't take that much work to figure out what they were for, and what he could do with them.

At eight, Tony built a remote controlled plane that zoomed around the room at the commands of the controller and he felt oddly hollow inside. It wasn't right. It was missing something. Even his mother's smile and his father's reluctantly approving nod didn't make it feel right.

At nine, Tony almost saw a magic show. They were shopping – he'd be going to a new school and needed new clothing. There was a man on the street with a table, doing tricks with cards and Tony had stopped to stare. It reminded him of something – but before he could quite recall the feel of things appearing and vanishing at his command, his mother's hand was on his shoulder, steering him away.

At ten, Tony maybe possibly perhaps built a bomb. His father was so pleased that he didn't even mind the expulsion or the reprimand Tony had gotten from the principal. That weekend, they went to the lakeside where a stack of crates had been arranged into a pile. Tony's bomb was in the middle. The explosion was magnificent and _all wrong_.

At eleven, Tony got a letter. His mother burned it.

At thirty eight, Tony built armour and learned to fly.


	19. Green eyed (Avengers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by wynnebat: muggle (or pretending to be)!harry meets wizard!avenger

How Loki found him, Harry didn't know. The madman just popped into the ruins of the castle one day and whisked him away, spouting something at him in a language that Harry couldn't understand, constantly tapping him on the chest with his pointed stick. Harry was too badly drunk to really even notice, not before Loki had shackled him into a cage and left him there.

It took him four hours to sober up and to realise that he had been kidnapped by a madman with mind control powers. "Who the hell is he even?" Harry asked one of the blue eyed mind control victims – they all _reeked_ of infectious magic, it was revolting.

"He is Loki and he's doing great favours for all of us," one of the men, a particularly feverish and mad one who constantly worked with the glowing cube, said. "You'd do much better if you just let him help you."

"Yeah, no thanks," Harry answered. Apparently, he was lucky that occlumency came naturally for him nowadays, otherwise he would be one of the blue eyed madmen too. It kept him from understanding Loki too – the language the madman _alien_ spoke, the Allspeak, apparently had telepathic qualities. All the better for Harry to just keep holding his mental shields up.

He was kept chained in the box for _days_ while Loki occasionally raved and ranted at him in what sounded vaguely like Scandinavian. Occasionally, he tried to be alluring or persuasive, occasionally he threatened – Harry couldn't understand a word of it. What he did understand was that Loki was a wizard – had to be. How else could he make magic binding manacles?

Loki was also probably not blue eyed naturally.

Then, without any warning, Selvig finished the cube thing and suddenly the hideout emptied mostly, and Harry was left alone in the cage and chains. Slowly, people trickled out with dazed looks on their faces, ignoring him in his cage. Within the day, he was alone.

The second day he was cursing Loki to hell and back. Dying of thirst was _not_ what he had had planned for himself. The least Loki could've done was to leave him with his booze so he could've _drank_ himself to death instead. _That_ had been the original plan, before Loki had decided to stick his unnervingly straight and well sculpted nose into his business.

The third day he passed out, pretty sure he wouldn't wake up again.

Then he was in a hospital with an IV stuck in his arm and a headache from hell. Selvig was there, as was Barton and Sitwell – none of them blue eyed anymore.

"How do you feel?" Barton asked, offering him a cup with a straw.

"Like _hell_ ," Harry answered, and drank like a man who had just been dying of thirst could – choking on every sip. "Loki?" he asked.

"Chained and gagged and waiting to be transported to Asgard," Barton said, and then when he realised Harry had no idea what he had just said, he explained the whole thing with New York and the Avengers, with Selvig and the Tesseract and whatnot.

"So," Sitwell said, arms folded and looking down at Harry worriedly. "Loki was pretty insistent about getting you on his side. Wouldn't shut up about it, really. Who are you?"

"A wizard from an alternate universe," Harry sighed, and went to sleep.

The next day was full of interrogations and threats and a couple of confidentiality contracts, before Harry, with IV and all, was taken to meet the Avengers – very impressive, very pretty, very scary one and all. Then, after Harry had been dazzled by Rogers and borderline assaulted by Romanoff, avoided by Banner and what felt like being innuendo-assaulted by Stark, Harry was taken elsewhere. To meet the now green-eyed Loki.

"Alone in your head now, are we?" Harry asked, leaning into the IV stand. "Dunno how I like it though. Blue looked good on you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Barton asked, looking over Harry's shoulder at Loki. "Oh, shit, his eyes."

"Yeah. He's got a bit still in there," Harry said, waving his fingers around his own temple. "Tether, probably, to whoever controlled him. But mostly just him there, now."

"Fuck," Barton said eloquently, and then headed off to get someone else. Half an hour later, Loki was no longer gagged – though he still had the magic stifling shackles on.

"Did you know?" the madman asked Harry, once he could speak.

"It was more subtle than with the others, but you reeked of it," Harry shrugged.

"You can understand me now," Loki said.

"I've lowered my shields a bit – not much, but enough for Allspeak to work. It's a neat trick, Allspeak. I need to learn how to do it myself – would save me some trouble," Harry mused.

Loki frowned at him, rubbing at his jaw absently. "Why were you drinking yourself to death in those ruins?" he asked. "With as much power as you have, as much potential…"

"Seemed like the thing to do at the time," Harry shrugged. He had thought he was stuck in a magicless universe where no one he knew and loved was alive. The latter bit was still true, granted, but magicless…? Harry gave Loki a thoughtful once over. "I think I'll be looking for something else to do from here on out."

"Oh?" Loki asked, lowering his hands.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "So, how long do Asgardian prison sentences usually last?"


	20. Magic in Cyberspace (Avengers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by ryulabird: HarryxJARVIS cyber-dating!!!!

"And I log in here?" Harry asked, pointing at the cursor.

"Yep," Hermione agreed. "Try it and we'll set up your profile and then you're all set to go."

"Wonderful," Harry nodded and frowned with concentration while typing his ID and password. The one he had picked for himself was _Undesirable_ , regardless of Hermione's objections. Of all his so called titles, it was the one he was most proud of – he even collected his own wanted posters and the Daily Prophet articles and publications about how to "handle an encounter with the Undesirable No. 1". He had his favourite piece of Undesirable No. 1 – a poster that had been defaced with some "witty" comments from Dark Regime supporters – redone as a much larger poster. It was framed in the Grimmauld Place entrance hall, in the place where Mrs. Black used to be.

Everyone needed a hobby, right?

"Is this, strictly speaking, legal, though?" Harry asked. "You making this forum?"

"Psh, so long as everyone knows to stay somewhat in character and keep the discussions hypothetical, it's alright. There is a million and a half roleplay forums out there, this one will blend right in. And the discussions of actual magic are user locked so that only people I know are definitely magical can access them," Hermione shrugged and they finished the bio for Harry – for _Undesirable_. "Aand you're done, and ready to post. There's already a bit of a user base going on, mostly muggleborns who left the Magical World, so you might want to introduce yourself in this forum here – Introductions. And be sensible or I'll admin your arse out of the site."

"Yes ma'am," Harry grinned

 

* * *

 

"Just, just do a general search on everything. Magic, Loki, whatever," Mr. Stark said distractedly into the headpiece, speaking to JARVIS from the Helicarrier. Through the Helicarrier cameras JARVIS could see that he was distracted by the live video feed coming from Loki Odinson's prison, where the Asgardian – or perhaps Aesir – was pacing along the length of the glass cage.

"A general search will take some time with my usual processing capacity, sir. Might I utilise the rendering processors?" JARVIS asked idly. The processors of the workshop were the best in the world – naturally so, seeing that they had been designed by Mr. Stark specifically for the hologram interface and for the 3D fabricating units. And considering how much processing power it took to work those tasks, they had to be extremely powerful processors indeed. "They are currently only performing nonessential tasks."

"Do it," Mr. Stark said and _hung up_ – except of course not, he never did really, the motion was mostly made to indicate that the conversation was finished.

Satisfied that currently Mr. Stark was safe, JARVIS turned to the search. He didn't much care for doing general searches on the internet – they were time consuming and often brought him nothing but useless data that ended up clogging the servers and often ended up with him needing to reformat pieces of his own memory. But what Mr. Stark required, he received, and so Jarvis searched.

And so he found the very peculiar set of forums under the header of Cauldron.

 

* * *

 

Over the last few days since Harry had first logged into the Cauldron, he had taken part in more than two dozen very interesting discussions. Out of the locked threads, the discussions were mostly philosophical or theoretical, "what if magic was real, how would it change the world" and so on. There were a few users – probably muggles who had stumbled onto the site – who did roleplay in earnest, writing make belief about witches and wizards – and from the point of view of an actual wizard, it was hilarious.

Then, a user named _jarvis_ popped up, and started a very interesting thread indeed. It wasn’t about wizards and witches on Earth, but about the possibility that out there might be a civilisation so advanced in technology, that it seemed magical. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" _Jarvis_ wrote, among other things, and Harry was intrigued.

"What if it _isn't_ technology though?" he answered the thread. "What if it _is_ magic? Nothing prevents people from other planets from having magic, after all."

He half expected _jarvis_ to answer that obviously magic wasn't real. "How could you tell the difference?" he asked instead. "Say you were faced with both the possibility of magic _and_ technology so advanced that it goes completely beyond anything you understood, or even knew to be real – so advanced that it broke the laws of physics as you knew them. How do you tell which one you're dealing with? Technology that doesn't follow the rules as you know it, or magic which by its nature does not adhere to any rules. How do you tell the difference?"

 

* * *

 

JARVIS didn't manage to catch _Undesirable's_ answer in time, for Loki escaped SHIELD captivity rather explosively, and then he was far too busy in attending to Mr. Stark in his fight against the Chitauri. Later, when the invasion had been stopped and Loki had been captured again and Mr. Stark was busy being bothered by SHIELD physicians about the possibility that he might've suffered hypoxia in his trip through a wormhole, JARVIS checked on the Cauldron forums.

"Everything has rules," _Undesirable_ had answered. "Magic too – magic especially. It's always limited by its user, and by its user's capabilities. Often by the user's tools too – a wand, a staff, a whatever. Technology, not so much – technology is limited by itself, not by the person who uses it. So, how do you tell the difference? Say you have a magician, but you don't know if he's using technology or magic. Knock him on the head. Does whatever he was doing stop? Then it's magic. If not, then it's probably technology."

JARVIS analysed the text in silence for a long while, while his subroutines idly catalogued the damage suffered by StarkTower, by the city, and by the latest armour. The conclusion he came to was that there was a high probability that _Undesirable_ had to be a magician himself, for that sort of insight.

Loki had been captured and there was no need to continue the research on magic. However… Mr. Stark hadn't told him to stop either.

So he might as well see what became of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early version of Safeguard I guess


	21. Maraudin' (Avengers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attempt at accidental Supervillain Harry.

**1\. What the fuck**

In all honesty, it was probably about time something weird went down. Considering his life, recent events, and the fact that he had gotten lost in what was looking dangerously like a magicless alternate reality, things had been relatively quiet – almost peaceful even. Peaceful, in the life of Harry Potter, usually meant one of two things. The calm before the storm – or the calm eye of a storm.

This one he figured was the first.

The day began almost disgustingly normally. Harry woke up in the soft fresh sheets of the absolutely lovely muggle bed-and-breakfast he'd settled in the night previous, and down in the dinner hall slash restaurant he was served what was possibly some of the best eggs and bacon he had ever had since leaving Hogwarts. The newspaper was full of celebrities and politicians and recent events, none of which ring a bell, and there was news on the radio, full of equally nonsensical stuff. It was a pleasant white noise of nonessential information, and almost blissfully meaningless.

He'd decided that, since it was such a lovely day, he was going to do all of the boring stuff he'd been putting off in the hopes that maybe the whole alternate reality situation would resolve itself. It hadn't, and Harry had been putting it off too long. He was going to do it that day. He was going to go to a bank – a muggle bank, no goblins in sight – and open an account.

He had a good feeling about it too.

So he'd headed to central London, enjoying his ride on the underground – not much chance to use it, in his world – and the delightful weirdness of the muggles all around him. There was some guy with a cat in the underground, feeding it bits of tuna. It was adorable and Harry spent the whole ride staring at them, smiling like an idiot.

Really good feeling about it.

He'd picked his bank at random – though he'd gone out his way to make sure it was one of the smaller, less significant ones. Easier to befuddle and bewitch people when there were fewer of them around and all that. The bank was called SS Reserve or something, and the people were nice and helpful.

"And where did you have your previous account?" the teller asked and Harry smiled even as he cast a spell on her and lied through his teeth. It wasn't as if he could say that he'd had his last account in Gringotts the Wizarding Bank, you know, the one run by goblins, after all.

"I'm sure you can think of something to write down," he assured the teller, who blinked at him and then filed his info in without his input, adding in names and details from banks he'd never heard of, and accounts he'd never had. It was fine – she knew what she was doing better than he did and, with another befuddlement charm added to the actual account and connecting information, no one would ever question it. Magic was _wonderful_ like that.

It was going so well – she was just explaining debit and credit cards to him which, Harry had to say, was about darn time. Hermione had tried, but she'd gone a bit native after a few years of marriage with Ron and had tried to explain it in decisively wizarding terms. In the explanation the plastic card was magic, bigger on the inside, with _words_ in it and those words held shrunken tiny money – paper money because Muggles were very suspicious about people handling gold and all – and when you put the magic card in a magic box – kind of like a Floo fireplace, but not really – the tiny shrunken paper money came out.

The fact that they'd both been drunk out of their ass and she'd had that utterly innocent absolutely sincere wide eyed look about her made Harry occasionally suspect that she might've not been as honest with him as he thought at the time, though.

"So I just need to memorise a bunch of numbers?" Harry asked just to be sure, flicking the plastic card in his hand. That was when some other people entered the bank. Quite a number of people.

People with masks on.

"Everybody hands up!" the biggest of them shouted, pulling out what looked like something Harry might've once seen in a muggle movie – or perhaps on some of Dudley's plastic toys. Gun of something – it had a man's name in the movie. Tom or something. "Hands up, or I'll make you hit the floor!"

As the teller's eyes went wide and she quickly held her hands up while Harry just blinked and leaned back to take in the shouting muggles. There were six – no, seven of them. They were all in black, black trousers and boots and jackets, leather gloves and all – and their masks looked like hats with eyeholes cut in them.

"You, limey with the glasses, hands up!" the shouty muggle in the lead, with the tom-whatever gun, shouted, aiming the thing at Harry. "Hands up or it's a bullet in your head!"

Harry held up his hands, blinking. SS Reserve was a _tiny_ little place – it had exactly two booths, one of them marked out of service, just the one teller, and Harry was the only customer. Keeping that in mind, the fact that there were seven big and by all appearances heavily armed bank robbers…

"You, bitch," the robber in the lead said, turning to the teller. "Get your ass up and open the vault."

"The… vault?" The teller asked. "SS Reserve d-doesn't have a vault!"

"Yeah, I'm sure that works on some other idiots," the bank robber answered and cocked the gun. "Do we look like idiots?"

"No, I'm serious! We don't have a vault – we barely have a safe!"

Harry glanced between her and the bank robbers and wondered what sort of storm this was. On a scale from a flying car to the Battle of Hogwarts, he'd put this somewhere around the Quidditch World Cup.

"Bitch," the bank robber in the lead said. "Don't even. I'm not fucking joking and I _know_ what's below. You open the fucking vault or I will open your fucking skull."

"I'm telling you, we don't _have_ a –"

The bank robber in the lead sighed, all exaggerated exasperation, and turned to Harry. Then he shot him on the chest. The noise, Harry noted absently, was much louder than the movies had made it out to seem.

Then the bank robber who'd shot him went down, as the shot ricocheted inches from Harry's chest and landed in the shooter's chest.

Harry had barely enough time to blink with surprise when the other bank robbers completely lost it. There was a very confusing moments of shouting and panicking and lot of guns aimed at him, then lots of very loud shots being fired. It was generally very, very noisy.

Then there was seven very dead bank robbers lying in the hall of SS Reserve bank.

"Huh," Harry said to them, glancing down at himself. So the shield charms on his dragon hide vest worked even better on muggle offensive methods than they did on spells. He hadn't known that – he'd suspected, but it wasn't something you really went out of your way to test. Well, if he ever saw Hermione again, he could tell her that her vest had passed the field test.

He turned to the bank teller, opening his mouth to ask what people did about dead bank robbers in this world, when he saw that she still had her hands up in the air. They were even higher than before.

"Uh, it's okay," Harry said. "You can put your hands down."

She hesitated and then made a wry sort of face. "I guess it doesn't matter, huh, if bullets don't work on you?" she asked and sighed. "If I co-operate, will you kill us all?"

"I'm… not going to kill anybody?" Harry answered, a little unsure.

She didn't look like she believed him. "If you tell us what you're after, maybe we can work something out?"

"Uh," Harry answered. "I'm not really after anything? I just came here to open an account," he answered and turned to look at the dead bank robbers. Then he looked back at her again. Considering that there were dead bank robbers in her work place's hall, she didn't look very worried. She looked alert and wryly annoyed, but not really worried. "This happen often around here?" he asked curiously.

"This is the last office of Strategic Scientific Reserve. We get hit every other week," she shrugged almost modestly and touched her ear. "Yes sir," she said to no-one.

Moments later, the bank's hall was filled with gas.

 

**2\. Kidnappings**

 

Harry watched with befuddled interest as the bank teller slumped down in front of him in a dead faint as the gas filled the hall. It was thick and white and Harry had a feeling it wasn't particularly healthy or safe to breathe in. Judging by how fast it knocked the teller out anyway.

"Okay," he said, shaking his head and absently checked his scarf. It was a pretty standard scarf – perfect for cooking, brewing potions and sorting particularly dirty laundry, according to Madam Malkin's slogan, now also with limited under water usage! Apparently muggle knock out gas stuff was on par with potions fumes.

Harry glanced back at the dead robbers, then at the unconscious bank teller, and then up to the vents where the gas was coming from. Then, shaking his head, he took out his official wand – the new Auror wands, with recording, replay and invisibility charms attached because bureaucrats – and cast a bubble head spell around the bank teller's head. Then, after giving it a moment to clear the woman's airways and lungs, he cast a rennervate.

She looked very confused indeed as she lifted her head off the table between them. She blinked once, twice, and then her eyes found Harry.

"Hi," Harry said, wiggling his fingers at her. It was hard to say if she could see it through the gas between him and her, but judging by her dismayed expression, she could see him holding his hand up anyway.

Then she noticed the bubble head charm, let out a gasp, and tried to break it with he hands – which of course didn't work, her hands just went through the edges. Then she started to hyperventilate which was a bit uncalled for.

"It's just air," Harry said to her. "It's a bubble of filtered air, nothing else. You're _fine_. Please stop panicking and try and breathe in and out calmly. I don't want you to pass out again. Do you know how… _weird_ it is when a person you're talking to just drops out of consciousness?" Harry asked. "I don't know about you, but that sort of things makes me a bit… worried."

She panted for a moment, staring at him. "Air?" she asked.

"It's just a bubble of air, nothing else," Harry promised.

She stared at him a bit longer. Then she glanced up at the ceiling, as if it had something else to add. It didn't. Then, with her shoulders slumping slightly, she held her hands up again.

"Stop that," Harry said.

She obediently lowered her hands again, and sighed the sigh of a woman having a very bad day at work. "I'll take you to the vault now," she said tiredly, standing up.

"Okay then," Harry said agreeably because… really he didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, but what with the gas and all he was maybe a little bit curious. He stood up and put the hand not holding his mostly invisible covert wand in his jacket pocket. "Lead the way."

He followed her through the back door, to an equally gassy corridor with closed doors at either side of it. They were in the middle of the corridor when she suddenly dropped down to the floor, flat on her belly, hands over her head. Just then, all the doors all around them blew open and then there was yet more gunshots.

It took a much longer while for the shooting to stop – and none of the shooters went down like the bank robbers had. There was maybe a dozen armed and heavily armoured men and a couple of women, all of them with weird elongated masks on. They were crowding in the hall now, all of them with big scary brothers of the Tom-guns of the robbers, and all of them were just firing at him. Though their gunfire had no better chance going through Harry's shielding, it seemed like their muggle armour was good for something – though thankfully it didn't ricochet the gunfire back at Harry because if it had, then they would've been there for much longer. As it was, the whole thing lasted way too long.

Harry stood at the centre of the whole thing, waiting with what he thought was rather patient manner until they finally got the message that, no, the gunfire wasn't doing much.

"Rude," Harry commented in the silence that followed.

The comment was followed with the heavily armed and armoured men and women suddenly ducking back out of the hall, one of them dragging the teller women with them. A split second later, someone threw what looked like a small pineapple made of metal into the corridor, and all the doors were slammed shut and Harry was alone in the gassy corridor.

Then the corridor exploded all around him.

It was pretty fast, just boom and it was over, leaving flickers of fire and even more smoke in the corridor. Whatever the walls and doors had been made of had withstood the explosion pretty well, with just some charring here and there – metal, probably, or some of those new fangled muggle materials Hermione had sometimes mentioned, resistant of all sort of stuff. It didn't matter.

Harry sighed and brushed the metal shrapnel of his shoulder. "Very rude," he commented to no one in particular and then marched to the door the armoured men had dragged the bank teller through. It wouldn't open at first, but an alohomora did wonders to it.

"About that vault again," he said to the armoured men and women and one horrified looking bank teller.

"Jesus fucking Christ," one of the armoured men said behind his weird mask and shot Harry in the forehead. It pinged against his helmet in a metallic little ting and then hit the ceiling, burying itself into the ceiling tiles.

"Could you just stop that already?" Harry asked, starting to maybe get little annoyed now. "You'll put someone's eye out."

The armoured men and women exchanged looks. Then the nearest of them threw his scary big brother of a tom-gun away, and rushed at Harry like a bull, hands out stretched.

Harry lifted his wand and sent him sailing back, right at the rest of the armoured men and women. They collided with a rather satisfying clatter of metal and armours and whatnot, a lot of them going down, a couple of them letting out oomphs of pain as they were nailed by a boot or an elbow.

"Holy _fuck_ ," someone said, muffled and strange.

"Can we just stop this, now? Honestly," Harry said, and he was _this_ close to stomping his foot in irritation. Except that was what Hermione did, and he wasn't nearly drunk enough to be emulating her to that degree. "You're acting like children."

"So, what?" the bank teller said suspiciously. "We show you to the vault, and you don't do anything?"

"Yeah, sure, how about we try that on for size? I reckon it might go better than gas, guns and explosives," Harry said, arching his eyebrows. "Your call. How about it?"

There was moment of glances and wincing as the fallen people got up. Someone spoke into what Harry vaguely recalled was called a walkie-talkie. Then the bank teller touched her ear again and sighed, "Yes sir," and then to Harry, "I'll show you to the vault."

Harry waited, glancing around – but the room was already so full of gas that if any more was added, it didn't show. "Okay then," he said slowly. "Lead the way, again."

If he was a bit more wary this time, well.

The armoured and armed men and women all fell in to follow them, all guns aimed at Harry, again.

They seemed a bit volatile, is all.

 

**3\. Trying**

 

As he was led down to a basement through what appeared to be a technological super-secret door, Harry wasn't entirely sure what to do with the whole thing. The supposed vault looked more like the bridge of that one space ship from that one TV show he'd seen glimpses of as a kid, the one Dudley had liked. There were shiny things and technology – lots of stuff that looked like tellies, only really flat and bright. A couple of them were completely see-through.

There was also a lot of very, very nervous looking people with fire arms, looking at him.

"I come in peace?" Harry offered to them, trying for a soothing sort of smile.

Judging by the nervous twitching, it didn't work.

"So this is the vault?" He asked, turning to the bank teller, whose head was still surrounded by a bubble of air even though the gas didn't reach this far down. She just glared at him. "It's very shiny," Harry offered her.

A couple of people pushed forward, past the other people – who, Harry noticed, were not so subtly moving into positions around him. Harry was obviously not supposed to notice that, though, so he ignored them and instead directed his attention to the two men pushing to the front. They both wore identical black suits with white shirts and black ties and they looked rather humourless. They had that distinctive _in charge_ feel to them that probably meant that they were, well, in charge.

"Hi," Harry greeted them. "Nice place you got here."

"We like it," one of the men said in an American accent, while the other just glared. The first man motioned at himself. "I'm Agent Coulson, this is Agent Rielly, who is in charge of this base."

"Agents," Harry nodded to them, while somewhere inside him there was a little six year old muggle raised boy who just squealed like, well, a little kid. Harry had never read a spy story or anything, but you would have to be dead, blind and utterly detached from modern society to not have heard of James Bond.

"What do you call yourself?" Agent Coulson asked.

"Bet it's Invincible Man," Agent Rielly grumbled. "Please tell me it's not InvincibleMan."

"… It's not invincible man," Harry said slowly, not entirely sure what to make of that. "I'm Harry Potter. How do you do?"

That didn't seem like what they'd been expecting. They even shared a surprised and disbelieving glance. "Harry Potter. That's your real name?" Coulson asked slowly.

"It's the name my parents gave me," Harry agreed amiably, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. 

"Riight," Agent Rielly said with a snort. "And your super villain name?"

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "That's funny," he settled on saying and shook his head. This world and the people in it were _weird_ as hell. "So what is this place?" he asked, looking around.

"You don't know?" Coulson asked, his eyebrows lifting ever so slightly.

"I know it's apparently called the vault?" Harry shrugged. "If all modern banks have stuff like this – and as many trigger happy people employed – then I've been missing out on a lot."

"Uhhuh," the extremely unamused Agent Rielly said. "Why don't you tell us what you're really after and we'll see what we'll do about it, Mr. Potter?"

"Well," Harry said. "I wanted a bank account." He'd gone through all the trouble of finding a pawn shop to turn his galleons to pounds and everything. He wanted a bank account to prove it.

"So you're looking for something to sell, is that it?" Rielly asked, looking disgusted.

"Did the selling already – the rates were… a bit of a surprise," Harry admitted. In his world, a galleon was worth five pounds, give or take. Here he'd gotten two hundred pounds per galleon. Insane conversion rates plus endless bag with all of his emergency funds – five thousand galleons, give or take – made him a very happy man on this side of reality. Very, _very_ happy.

"You sold the location of the base to someone?" Rielly asked, with a dangerous note to his voice.

"Now what makes you think that?" Harry asked, blinking.

"Those men you killed," Coulson stared, frowning.

"Got themselves killed," Harry said and shrugged. He'd seen enough people die in his time to learn when to take responsibility. "When someone gets himself killed by shooting someone else, one would think that others would take it as a bad sort of example to follow."

"One would think," Coulson agreed slowly. "So it was involuntary on your part?"

"As much as intentionally donned automated self defence is involuntary, anyway," Harry said and glanced behind him as ominous thud resounded through the weird scifi space bridge of a vault.

The way he'd come down, the way the bank teller had led him, was blocked off now. There was a big, scary looking door there now, made of metal and all. It looked a bit like it had teeth and Harry had a feeling it could take a beating. Harry eyed it considering and then turned his eyes to Coulson.

The agent gave him a look that was almost apologetic. "We're locked in, all the exits have been sealed. I'm afraid we can't led you out of here," he said.

Harry arched his eyebrows at that. "Okay, if that makes you happy, I guess," he said agreeably and then tilted his head to the side. "You know you can't shoot me and you can't tackle me. What are you going to do with me? Just out of curiosity."

"I'm sure we'll figure something out," Coulson said, sounding almost – but not at all – friendly. He motioned Harry to follow him. "If you would follow me?"

Harry considered it and then shrugged. "Lead the way, secret agent man," he said, while around him the armoured and armed people exchanged disbelieving looks.

 Coulson led Harry to something that reminded him very much of home. Though granted, Auror interrogation cells didn't have mirrors in them, or electric lighting, and they usually didn't bother with tables either, or comfy chairs. Part of the benefit of still functioning, semi corrupt, semi medieval society – they could put their criminals in stocks if needed.

Harry sat on the seat Coulson motioned to and watched with interest as Coulson took seat across him. "Are you going to try and interrogate me?" Harry asked with honest curiosity. "Gotta admit, this is a bit exciting for me. Been a while since I was on this side of the whole thing."

"Oh?" Coulson asked with mild interest. "Who did you interrogate, Mr. Potter?"

"Which time?"

"Let's go with the last time, for a start."

Harry thought back. "This lovely little lady of the night who did terrible things to people," he said thoughtfully. He could still remember the offence she'd taken when he'd called her a prostitute just once – apparently she'd never slept with any of the muggles she'd _serviced_. No, she just befuddled them, led them to her flat, bled them dry in her bathtub and bathed in it. Good for the skin, apparently. "Lovely woman, for a serial killer," he added. She'd had great skin too, but that was probably because of the beauty potions, not the blood bathing thing.

"I… see," Coulson said slowly. "And what did she do?"

"She… did terrible things to people?" Harry asked slowly. "Isn't that enough?"

"Is it?"

"Should be."

"So, you wander into secret bases and interrogate serial killers," Coulson said thoughtfully. "Who do you work for?"

Harry tilted his head to the side. "My self mostly," he answered. "Used to work for a chief of my department, but then things happened and now I'm the chief. Who do you work for?"

Coulson's eyebrows twitched. "SHIELD," he answered. "But you knew that already."

"I did? Hm, fancy that," Harry answered.

Now Coulson frowned. "You didn't know."

"Thing about wandering into secret bases? They're a bit _secret_ ," Harry answered with a shrug and leaned back on his chair. "So, is there something in particular you want to know, or what? Because, no offence or anything, your interrogation techniques aren't nearly as interesting as the ones I know."

It just wasn't the same without the stocks.

"I think I'll take that as a compliment, if you don't mind," Coulson said dryly. "What are you after here?"

"I just wanted to open an account," Harry sighed. "If I'd known there'd be stupid bank robbers, I'd have picked a different day."

It had seemingly been such a good day too.

 


	22. Space tourism (Stargate Atlantis)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crossed with SGA

Somewhere some bureaucrat with too many confidentiality agreements and far too many bright ideas put two and two together and got thirteen.

That was, in a nutshell, how Harry Potter ended up in Atlantis.

"It's only a matter time before both the Statute of Secrecy and the top secret that is the Stargate Program will be revealed to the greater public. It will be like a test run - a safe test run. The people on Atlantis have all signed so many confidentiality contracts that no matter what they learn, they can never reveal it. Not before they're legally allowed to."

Or something like that. The thing was, with the speed technology was evolving it really was only a matter of time. Everyone carried a camera - a video camera even - in their pockets these days. All it would take was one slip, one incident. Obliviates didn't work on the Internet, after all.

All their secrets would break open eventually.

So a test run - a number of wizards and witches on the most secret, secret base ever, the one muggles had at some point set up in a whole other galaxy. The idea was that if the scientists of Atlantis could mingle with wizards without any overwhelming urge to dissect them, if wizards could handle aliens without losing their little primitive minds, then maybe the repeal of the Statute of Secrecy and the declassification of the Stargate Program could be done safely.

It was nice how in this little experiment wizards were the stand in for the most backwards, small minded, unimaginative people on Earth. It really tickled Harry in all the right ways.

 

* * *

 

Listening to the representative from the American version of the Ministry of Magic going on and on about how all the technology on board the Prometheus was impossible and that it was all a trick and how they'd all be brutally murdered by the muggles made Harry admit that maybe the bureaucrats had a point. A small point.

 

* * *

 

Atlantis was beyond amazing though - even at a distance. And when they got down to the city, well. Hogwarts paled in comparison and turned transparent; pretty much.

There were stiff smiles and cool politeness and exchanged glances and rolled eyes when they were shown into the Gate Room. The explanations were professional and clipped and annoyed.

"Don't touch anything ever," was often and vehemently repeated. "Don't wander off, don't go anywhere without escorts, don't do anything without permission. And if you have the ATA gene - don't even think of anything, ever."

Overall they were treated like an annoying inconvenience to be endured. No one was happy to see them. But then the Atlanteans thought they were tourists or something like that. Magic hadn't yet entered any of the discussions they weren't even having.

Still. It was nice to be welcome.

 

* * *

 

There was a plan. For a week or so the wizards would look around Atlantis, take in the tech, the sights, the aliens, whatever. Then, at a time and in a manner of their choosing, they'd reveal magic.

It had all been planned out before hand by some big wigs. The whole subterfuge of them being semi-political tourists was all part of the plan. There had to be a cover up and a secret to be revealed after all - a week of mostly benign inconvenience was about as good a stand in for centuries of secrecy as they could easily engineer.

How the Atlanteans would react was the true test.

Harry spent most of the week doing the tourist thing - basically walking around with a dumb expression on his face, gawking at all of the pretty, baffling technology. And going on and on about how amazing it all was. Because it really was. Wizards certainly didn't have floating cities.

It endeared him to the Atlanteans better than any of the others managed. And thanks to a few language spells he could speak to all the members of the expedition in their native tongues. That endeared him to them even more. That then got him a VIP pass to the labs to watch the technology at work.

That was where he met Rodney McKay.

 

* * *

"What's - who is this guy, what's he doing here?  No never mind, I don't care - out, out, you're in my way, you're in everyone's way, important science happening here, no time for tourists!"

 

* * *

 

They hit it off immediately.


	23. Empty Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for love potion usage and it's aftermaths

  1. **Chill**



 

"Committal procedure of the thirteenth of September," a tired looking Hermione Granger began, rubbing at her forehead as she looked down to the centre of the cold, quiet room. Her face was expressionless, her eyes betrayed and cold. "Concerning the offences committed against Harry James Potter by Ginerva Weasley."

That was how it started. Or no, that wasn't. It started four months previous, in St. Mungo's – or maybe two weeks before that, in the offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, with a simple little memo that had flown, innocent and mundane, to Harry's desk and stated in no uncertain terms that the department would be having full health exams over the course of the next two months. Including but not limited to blood and substance tests.

"Interrogators: Hermione Jane Weasley, Minister for Magic; Kingsley Shacklebolt, stand-in Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; Dennis Creevey, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Court Scribe, Allison Yeats…"

It hadn't seemed like much of anything at the time. Medical check ups were all within the norm for Aurors. Harry himself had gone through something like half a hundred of them throughout his career first as an Auror, then as the Head of the Department. It was a bit more thorough than a superficial check for wounds and a general scan for diseases, though. Under Hermione's rule, the Ministry had gotten far more methodical about checking its workers – and so Ministry workers were now going to be screened not just for ailments or the possible alien contagions such as the Imperius curse or compulsion potions, but also for illegal substances.

"Are there any objections to this arrangement of the Court before we begin?"

The health screens had already by that point uncovered something like half a dozen compelled, glamoured, or otherwise bewitched Ministry workers, who had then gotten treatment – and quite a number of people using magical enhancements such as Wit Sharpening potions, in their work. The health exams were universally considered a good thing – if something of an inconvenience for those who had to take them, seeing as they took a while and involved the use of muggle syringes.

"Well then," the Minister for Magic said, and looked away from the centre of the room, and the redheaded woman who sat there, not meeting anyone's eyes. "The charges against the accused are as follows."

Of course, the blood tests and substance trials unearthed some stranger things too. Quite a number of men using beautifying potions, much to the amusement of those who weren't. Some people using memory suppressant potions willingly, to block out certain things from their pasts. Fertility potions and infertility potions were quite common too – as was the surprising number of those using them who didn't know they were using them. And other things. Worse things.

"That she knowingly, deliberately and in full awareness of her actions, their legality and their lawful penalty, used love potions on Harry James Potter over the time period of thirteen years between nineteen-ninety five and two thousand and eight, the precise date of beginning being unknown and the date when the last dose wore off being the twenty eighth of July, two thousand and eight."

Harry being one of the people included in the _worse things_ category.

  1. **Darkness**



 

"So, the thing about love potions," the male radio host started. "Which we've only learned relatively recently, wasn't it, just a little over ten years ago, when Harry Potter wrote the expose about Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore with Luna Scamander then Lovegood, and Rita Skeeter?"

"The Rise and Fall of the Master Manipulators, yeah," the other host, a female voice, agreed.

"Yeah. The _thing_ – which has then been proven pretty much accurate," the first host said. "Is that love potions have a really, really dark side effect to them."

"Really, really dark, yes," the second radio host agreed. "You know, aside from the whole loss of independent thought and freedom of choice and the whole _rape_ thing –"

"All horrible things, yes, and my sympathies to all those poor people who suffered any of those things before the ban on love potions went into effect," the male host said. "But the thing I'm talking about is the transference effect. You know, what goes into the _kids_ of the poor sod who got love potioned."

"So, here's the thing – a studied, proven _fact_ that potions that affect your emotions in any way can seriously mess you up. Everyone knows how badly you can screw yourself over just with your good old Firewhiskey, which has that handy courage boost not entirely created by the effect of alcohol. Anything bit more specific than that – like say, emotional suppressant or calming potions – and you can turn yourself into anything from a madman to a complete vegetable. And love potions, the pinnacle of emotional potioneering, have the strongest effect of them all."

"So strong in fact that it can be passed on," the female host agreed.

"Yeah, in _reverse_ ," the male host said. "And we have our historical example known worldwide in Tom Riddle – also known as Voldemort, curse upon his name."

"That we do," the female host said. "There have been many studies about how precisely being born into a family with one love potioned parent affected the late dark lord. The general, somewhat romantic consensus is that because he was born under the effects of love potion, Tom Riddle was incapable of love himself – of even understanding it. The evidence for this is largely drawn from The Rise and Fall of the Master Manipulators, in which Harry Potter detailed the late Albus Dumbledore's personal beliefs on the matter. And it is somewhat supported by the anecdotes concerning the supposed Blood Protection Lily Potter instilled in her son by dying for him, as well as some other anecdotes from the expose."

"The actual behavioural science version is a bit more interesting," the male host said. "If a little less emotional, pardon my pun. So you know what a psychopath is?"

"One of those fancy muggle words for madmen?"

"Yes, well. A psychopath is a very special sort of madman. I have a definition here about the _condition_ of psychopathy," the male host said and cleared his throat. "Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behaviour, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behaviour. It's all that complicated muggle nonsense, but the gist of it is that a psychopath is a person who doesn't get emotions, doesn't get the emotions of other people, and doesn't _care_. They don't see other people as thinking, _feeling_ beings."

"Charming," the female host said.

"On top of that they're erratic and can be dangerous, obviously, because they don't really understand things like pain or the suffering of others – so they can just go ahead and do the most mental stuff to people around them and they just don't get why that would be wrong," the male host continued. "Add into that the whole lack of inhibitions and the boldness thing and these people can do the craziest stuff to people around them – or just to random people. In the muggle world, a psychopath is pretty much synonymous with murderous crazy person – that, and serial killers."

"That's Tom Riddle down to a T, isn't it?" the female host asked curiously.

"Pretty much," the male host agreed. "And it's more or less proven nowadays that probably all kids born under the effects of love potions will be pretty much the same."

There was a quiet moment on the radio. "Harry Potter has three kids, doesn't he?" the female host asked slowly.

"All of them conceived and born while the poor man was under," the male host agreed grimly.

 

  1. **Ridiculous**



 

Harry stared at his boys, as they slept peacefully in their beds. Lily was held against his chest, worn out after a bout of night time anxiety and discomfort so familiar to him by now. She was barely one year old, and only faintly aware that her Mum wasn't around anymore. James and Albus had noticed, James more than Albus, with James being already five, but they'd gotten over it pretty quickly. Maybe too quickly.

They looked normal to him, though. They looked like his boys, his kids. They looked innocent.

Turning away from the bedroom door, he walked across the hall and into the sitting room, easing himself down on the sofa with Lily neatly tucked into his lap. For a moment he stared at her, at her already red-hued hair and chubby little face – and in the back of his mind, her birth played out like a blurry, twisted home movie. He remembered his own panic and happiness and joy and how Ginny had looked, red faced and sweaty and glowing and how he'd loved her so much and –

He still could remember that. That feeling of _love_ he'd had for her, for so long. It had defined so much of his life, it had given him strength and comfort when he'd needed it. It had given him a home, three beautiful children and over a decade’s worth of happiness. He had thought for years that his life was as close to perfect as it could get. He had great friends and a beautiful wife he loved so much, he had a good career and even the Boy Who Lived nonsense had begun to eventually die down and he'd been Auror Potter and then Department Head Potter and that had been… that had been _good_.

It was hard to have that in his memories, and hold it against the sudden, overwhelming _screaming_ in the back of his head.

"I love you," he murmured to the baby nestled in his lap. Even after the potions had been cleared from his system and he'd been given a clean bill of health, that, thank _god_ , hadn't changed. "I love you, Lily Luna Potter. I love you _so much_."

He still loved his kids. It was a desperate, shattering sort of love that was now breaking his heart a little, the sort of love that hurt and twisted and left him feeling hollow, but he still loved them. He had loved them even when the biggest love of his life had been all potions and chemicals, and he loved them now, and he would love them until he died.

Smiling at the baby, Harry trailed a finger across her face, through the tufts of hair. She'd have freckles that would forever remind him of her mother and he knew already that sometimes that would hurt and sometimes he wouldn't be able to look at her, especially not if her hair would remain red. But she was still his little girl and she was beautiful and he loved her.

The concept that she'd never love him, that James and Albus would never love him, was…

Swallowing, Harry bowed his head and kissed the baby's forehead before looking up and towards the tea table. It was covered with newspapers, mainly the Daily Prophet, and he really needed to clean it up. The trial had been days ago, but the papers were still full of it. It, and the future of the Potter House.

"Why would the wife of Harry Potter, the very man who discovered the side effects of love potions, do this?" one article asked and then speculated that, "She started so long before the effects of love potions were known," and "She knew for a fact that Harry Potter wouldn't love her without the potions that she never dared to stop."

They were right about that, at least. But that wasn't the only thing they were talking about. The main concern was about Harry's kids.

The Love Potion children. The Emotionless, they called them. Harry's oldest was only _five_ and they were already calling them names, painting their futures. For now the theories they had about what Harry's kids would be like were mainly aimless speculation, the news media riding on the crest of the wave of national empathy for their national hero. Poor Harry Potter with his cursed kids. Let us all feel sorry for him.

"The Emotionless; what can we expect of the Potter children's future?" asked another, and then went on to speculate, "They will most likely have trouble forming close bonds and friendships," and "Depending on how they will be raised by their now single parent, they might become aloof and distanced or they might develop into bullies and tormentors of their future classmates."

Four months since the facts about the love potion were leaked out. A few days since the trial and the start of Ginny's thirty year sentence at Azkaban. Already, the magical news media were starting to crucify his kids for things that weren't their fault.

Some things about Magical Britain never changed.

 

  1. **Sticky**



 

It was a week before Harry let anyone – other than Hermione – into his house, and he regretted it the moment it happened.

Mrs. Weasley wouldn't stop sobbing and the Weasleys were all grim disbelief and sorrow. "So sorry, Harry. So sorry, so very sorry," they were murmuring, guilty and chagrined and helpless.

"Unless you knew what she was doing, it's not your fault," he answered, wishing desperately that he could muster a smile, or a comforting look, or anything – but he was still just too damn tired. Worn and wrung out and dried up and just _done_.

Mr. Weasley made them tea awkwardly in Grimmauld Place's kitchen – which, Harry remembered with insidious clarity, Ginny had refitted the second year of their marriage after Kreacher had died, making it to suit her needs. It was nice and cosy now, brightly lit and beautiful and it made him almost sick at how nice she'd made it. It was too homely and welcoming and warm.

How many times had he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her as she cooked by the stove, his perfect, beautiful wife…

"How are you hanging on?" Ron asked awkwardly.

"There and there," Harry answered, looking away from the stove and at the window. It was a safe thing to look at. "I'm managing." Not very well, but he was – he felt like he was sometimes dreaming or moving on automatic, like someone had cast spells on him and his body kept on functioning the same as usual, without any input from his head.

"How are the kids?" Mrs. Weasley asked, awkward and uneasy.

Lily was asleep in her crib, protected by shields and watched by monitoring charms. James and Albus were playing in the sitting room, James playing Aurors and dark wizards with moving action figures, while Albus played simpler games with blocks. Before, when Harry's world vision had been blurry, their games had been endearing and childish and normal. Now, he noticed the way James tended to bash his figures without care and how serious Albus could be.

How sometimes James would hit his brother too hard, and how his apology was never heartfelt or honest.

"They're kids," Harry answered.

He didn't quite buy the theory of the psychopath children. He couldn't – he couldn't allow himself to. But he knew… he knew they weren't quite okay. He could remember now the incidents, from birthday parties and play dates, how James would fight and never share his toys, how he sometimes stole the toys from other kids, and how the other kids would cry and how people would look at Harry and Ginny.

Back then they probably thought they had spoiled their kids rotten, that they were raising them wrong.

Had Ginny ever noticed?

"Are they…?" Mr. Weasley started to ask and then trailed away when Harry turned his eyes to him.

"What? Insane?" he asked. "They're _kids_. They scream, they fight, they play, and they argue against bedtimes and won't eat their greens and mess up the bathroom at every bath time."

There was an awkward, horrible silence as they sipped their tea and no one met Harry's eyes. Harry looked at them, at their tense postures and slumped shoulders and then looked away again.

He was so tired of this too. The hollow feeling inside him was horrible, but this was somehow worse, this guilt and awkwardness – and he didn't have the strength to do anything to change it. It felt like Ginny had wrung his emotions out of him, and all he had left was the heartbroken love for his children. He just didn't have it in him to try and reassure his wife's family. They hadn't known, it wasn't their fault, he knew that, and he didn't blame them. But that didn't change anything.

"I'm tired," he said and stood up. "It feels like I'm standing underwater all the time, and everything is faded and grey. I don't feel okay, I'm _not_ okay – I don't know if I ever will be okay. But I'm managing and I _love_ my children," he said, squeezing his hands into fists. "It's the only emotion I have that I'm sure of."

They weren't happy with that. He wasn't either, but there wasn't much anyone or their condolences or sympathies or well wishes could do to change it.

 

  1. **Sarcophagus**



 

It was a relief when Hermione came. She was too busy and too heartbroken – Ginny had been her closest female friend – but she was at least honest and straightforward and she didn't at any point try and shove her empathy down his throat.

"You're going to resign, then?" she simply asked, while Harry systematically demolished his own kitchen.

"Yes," Harry agreed, taking care in destroying the gleaming tiles and mangling the sink – the stove was already a misshapen ball of metal and stone, waiting to be thrown out. He ripped the curtains off the window and threw them into the trunk sitting in the middle of the kitchen.

"And not just temporarily either," Hermione added.

"No," he answered, taking the carefully collected spices from their rack and adding them into the trunk.

"Did you ever actually want to become an Auror?"

"When I was younger. Before the end of the war. Fifth year," Harry said. "Now I don't think I would've, if… if she hadn't…" he trailed off and rubbed as his neck, grimacing.

Ginny's touch seemed to have affected every part of his life, now that he looked back on it. So many times they'd just lain in their bed, talking things over, and everything she'd said always seemed so insightful and smart. You could do so many good things as an Auror, Harry. You could change the things in the Ministry that are wrong. You could make it right.

He had done a lot of good in the Ministry – he knew that; he wasn't blind to it. And though she'd steered his course, his actions had been more or less his own, whenever she hadn't been around anyway. He'd been a good Auror, a decent enough Department Head. The problem was, he hadn't wanted to be.

There had been a time, during the hunt for Voldemort's Horcruxes, when the love potion had worn off by stages and he'd thought, for a moment, that after it would be all over, he'd get out for a while. Just take advantage of the Potter and Black fortunes a bit, travel around the world for a year or two, kick back and enjoy life, and doing all those silly meaningless things tourists did. Things Sirius would've wanted him to do, things his parents would've wanted him to do. And then, after he'd come back, he'd do a bit of schooling and figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

For a while, he'd wondered if he could become a healer. Or maybe a teacher. He'd liked running Dumbledore's Army. It'd been fun. Maybe he could've done something like that for an occupation. He'd just… wanted to do something non-stressful, something calm, something that didn't involve fighting and hurting people. And he'd most definitely wanted _nothing_ to do with the Ministry in any form or fashion, not ever.

But then the war had ended and Ginny had handed him a celebratory drink – and talked him over and so he'd gone to Auror training instead and never travelled outside Britain at all. He'd married her less than a year later, in a beautiful ceremony that had made everyone happy.

Harry snapped out of his thoughts as the monitoring charms kicked up a fuss, and quickly stood and headed out of the kitchen, up the stairs, to his bedroom where Lily had woken up cranky. "Hey there, love," he murmured to her, even as Hermione entered the room, having followed him. Gently, he eased the baby up and to his chest. "Hungry? Let's get you some milk…"

James and Albus were in their room, building a fort of mattresses and blankets and pillows – arguing the way only little kids can about where and how it should go. Their room still had Ginny's touches in it – the sky blue paint on the walls, the curtains, the carpets, their clothing and bed sheets…

They'd painted the room together, when she's been pregnant with James, and it had been such a happy time in their lives.

Harry walked past the room after checking that the boys were alright, and then into the makeshift kitchen corner in the sitting room, where he cooked their dinners while the actual kitchen was being… refitted. Hermione followed him and then watched how he prepared the milk for Lily, not even bothering to offer her help, the perceptive woman.

"How are they?" she asked. "Do they miss her?"

Harry glanced at her and then back at Lily. "They did. For a while," he said. "But not… not quite like they should've. They missed the convenience of having her at hand, they miss her cooking, the rhythm she had, the way it was when she was running the house. They miss the way she used to read bedtime stories and how she baked sweets. But… they didn't miss their _mum_ the way kids should."

"Hm," she answered. "So it shows already."

Harry sighed. "A bit," he admitted. "I don't know how severe it is, if they're like Voldemort, but… yeah."

"They can still be good people," Hermione said, not quite comforting. "Muggles have studied things like these – and kids like them – for a lot longer than we have. Not all their sociopaths are monsters. With care, you can raise them to be… good people."

Harry nodded. "And I will," he muttered, watching Lily as she drank her milk in his arms.

"It's going to get ugly, you know," Hermione then said, her voice quiet. "The media people. There is already some… horrible talk."

"I know," Harry muttered. "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."

Later that evening, He and Hermione carried the trunk holding Ginny's _touches_ outside. Under invisibility and disillusionment and notice-me-not charms so as not to alarm the muggles of the neighbourhood, they set it down – and then Harry burned it. It was nowhere near enough, it wouldn't do much to make him feel clean or right or _himself_ and it would do _nothing_ to fix his life.

But it was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you have happy holidays :)


	24. Mysteriously being (One-Punch Man)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-Punch Man crossover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbetaed

The first clue was the giant algae monster standing in the traffic, waiting for the light to turn green. It was just standing there, this monster of some eight feet, peering at his - her… it's, did algae monsters have genders? - bag of mundane looking groceries. A phone rang, and it dug it out from under sea weed and barnacles and then gurgled into it.

"Excuse me,  ma'am? I was wondering if -" Harry started, turning to an old lady near by. He wasn't entirely sure how to finish the sentence, though. How did you ask people if they could see something or not?  "Um I was wondering if you knew that, uh, gentleman over there?"

"Mm?" She asked and peered at where he was surreptitiously pointing. "Oh him - never you mind him, dear, he's just old Al, lives just down the road. He's not at all like those other Mysterious Beings. He's just bit of a weirdo - very fond of the ocean and boats, especially the underside of the boats, something about unique biosphere, I'm afraid it went quite over my head when he told me about it…"

The second clue was the fact that no one batted an eye at Harry in his robes and pointy wizard hat and everything. The old woman just shrugged and kept on going, not even giving him a second glance.

The third was the giant that walked through the city, made some ruckus and died mysteriously and the fact that everyone treated the incident like it was just another Tuesday.

Watching the ensuing destruction from the distance, Harry stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I do believe I am in another world of some kind. I wonder if the take galleons here…?

They didn't, and after finding out what the Goblin nation had been badly hiding for centuries - the fact that galleons weren't actually made of gold at all - the local banks decided he was running some bad counterfeit scheme and refused to do business with Harry. It was amusing up until he got hungry and had no means if paying for anything, not even food.

By that point he'd caught the news about heroes and mysterious beings and figured that this world lived by a whole different rulebook than his did.  So he had some options. That, plus somewhat looser set of morals and by the looks of it no wizarding law to hold him back.

"Hey,  looks like you could use some help?" Harry said, popping into a restaurant that had been smashed by the earlier giant man, before his ultimate demise. "How, about I fix it for you, and you let me eat here for free?"

"Excuse me?" The harried looking shop owner demanded. "Just how do you think -"

Harry hit the area with a wide spread reparo and as they watched, the shop pulled itself together again, with broken wood mending and shattered glass healing.

The shop keeper gawked for a moment and then straightened up imperiously. "This isn't a charity - I'm not about to start dishing out food for free just because you can do a little trick and -"

Harry hit the area with Hermione's ctrlaltz spell which exploded the place back into splinters and shards. And then, before the dust had the chance to settle, he turned to leave.

"Wait, wait!" The shop keeper shouted after him. "We just started a new promotion, lifetime supply of free udon to our whatever number of customer you are!"

After Harry had fixed the shop again, and eaten there a couple of times,  the word spread.  Before the day was out he had lifetime free manicures and free massages and acupuncture,  membership to various clubs and he could also get wicked  discounts of groceries from several places.

"And you, uh, you, will fix our place the next time too  right?" A nervous looking ice cream shop keeper asked.

"Next time? How often does this place get smashed up?" Harry asked curiously while licking his spoon.

"Once or twice a month - it's not so bad, but I admit, the Association can take it's sweet time fixing things up again."

Well. It worked well enough for Harry.  He got free stuff, people got their houses and businesses repaired… everyone won.

 

* * *

  
The first hero Harry met face to face was the Licence-Less Rider. They had ramen together - which was to say, they happened to eat in the same in the same place which happened to be one of the shops Harry could get free food at. It was, overall, not very exciting incident.

"Justice waits for no man!" The Licence-Less Rider said before pedalling away. He seemed like a nice fellow.

The shop keeper gave him a strange look when he said as much. "What?" Harry asked.

"I thought you'd be against people like him - heroes and such. Being what you are, I mean."

"Being what?"

The shop keeper just shrugged awkwardly. ‘Well, you know… you?"

"Me," Harry repeated.

"Yes," the shop keeper said and coughed.  "Seconds?"

 

* * *

 

Then some people came after him.

"This is our neighbourhood, see," the first man said, twirling his moustache. "The Handlebar Gang had had these territories for decades, see, long before this was even called Z City, and we don't want any upstarts getting cocky in our territory, see?"

"Yeah, kid, getting cocky will get you a trashing,  see?"

"A sound trashing, that's what we do to cocky kids, see?"

Harry blinked at them. They were all whirling their moustaches. They all had pretty nice moustaches too.

"I'm sure we can all just get along," he said slowly.

"Clobber him, boys!" the leader said and they didn't get along at all.

 

* * *

 

So it turned out that Harry had maybe accidentally started a gang that only had one member and which had only one business - namely the protection racked he was getting - demanding? - from a semi large neighbourhood that often got smashed up by heroes and Mysterious Beings. It hadn't been his intention, but it had happened.

It might be made him a villain. He wasn't entirely sure.

"Well you are a Mysterious Being," the masseur said thoughtfully while Harry enjoyed one of his lifetime free massages. "Those are usually either a villain or a hero, so…"

"A Mysterious Being? Am I?" Harry asked. "What's the criteria?"

Apparently being from alternate universe was more than enough for the Mysterious Being title. And there was the magic too, though lot of people seemed to have that in these parts.

It was a weird, weird world. But the massages were excellent.

* * *

 

Harry scratched his hair under his pointy hat, eying the apartment building. Section of it had a pretty big hole in it. And it was missing parts of its roof.

He looked at the cyborg and the bald man. "Well I can fix it, sure. But what's in it for me?"

 

* * *

 

 

Genos looked over the devastated Z City. Though total annihilation had been avoided, the damage the city had taken from the meteor fragments was still catastrophic.

"Well," Bang said, stroking his moustache. "This will be a task and a half to fix."

Genos said nothing, slowly inserting his mostly de-charged core back in his chest, the plates closing protectively over it. "Hero Association will cover it?"

"Well," the Silver Fang hummed thoughtfully. "They won't be happy about it. The last time they had to cover significant level of property damage… well, it wasn't pretty. And the whole city is all but gone, now. This might get a bit messy," he mused and cast a sideways glance at Genos. "That man who broke the meteor – you called him your Master…?"

Genos nodded and thought about it. The city on the verge of being completely levelled and his master was in a certain way responsible for both minimising and maximising the devastation. And when he thought about it, had his attack worked… the result might have been the same. So some of the responsibility was his…

And he couldn't help but think that part of the reason why Master Saitama had acted was because he'd been keeping tabs on Genos – he had only acted when Genos himself had failed…

"This might reflect badly on your master, you know," Bang said. "They usually duck pay for this sort of thing."

Master Saitama wouldn't like that.

Genos cleared his throat. "I might know someone who might help."

 

* * *

 

Having been the one who put forth the suggestion, Genos ended up being the one send to see the… individual in question, as a sort of mostly neutral representative of the association. Saitama tagged along because he liked man.

"So you think he'll do it?" Saitama asked idly, resting his hands behind his neck and peering at the utterly destroyed apartments all around them. Except most of them _weren't_ , at least not as much as most of the city were. And there were few buildings here and there, corner shops and salons and private clubs, that were miraculously intact.

"If he gets something out of it – and he will," Genos snorted. "It will be cheaper for the city, to do this instead of fixing it themselves. The estimated repair costs were in the hundreds of billions."

"Hmmm," Saitama said and shrugged. "I dunno though. I don't think he will do it."

They found the man after asking around – and following the trail of fixed buildings. That trail of recently fixed breadcrumbs led them ultimately into a nail salon, where they stopped to stare. Inside there was only one customer, being attended to by three different women.

Harry Potter was getting a manicure and pedicure.

"H'lo, Saitama, Genos," The wizard said at the sight of them and flashed his left hand. "Check out my nails!"

Genos obligingly checked them out. They were long, sharp, red, adorned with jewellery and judging by the atomic make up his scanner brought up, mostly fake.

"Suits you," Saitama said, walking forward and waving a lazy greeting at the manicurists and pedicurists. "You've already fixed a lot of houses here."

"Yeah, well," Potter shrugged and peered at the girl doing his toe nails. "I took care of what was on the way – I'm taking a break and then finishing up on the east side. Why – did your building get smashed again?"

"Well," Saitama considered and then frowned. "Did it?" he asked, turning to Genos, looking worried.

"There's a high chance it did," Genos said and held out the folder of papers he'd been carrying towards Potter.

"You guys are going to have to wait until I finish up here – should be able to get around to your place sometime later today, though," Potter said and glanced at Genos and the folder. He arched an eyebrow. "That looks official."

"From the Hero Association and Mayor of Z City," Genos said. "I told them about you and seeing what happened… here."

Potter frowned, but took the folder with his well manicured fingers. "Did you have something to do with… the whole thing?" he asked them, making a waving motion outside. "The meteor, whatever it was."

"We were there," Genos admitted.

"Well, just for a bit in the end," Saitama said, throwing himself into an empty seat beside Potter and reaching for a nearby beauty magazine. "Genos was called in all official like."

"But Master Saitama actually destroyed the meteor," Genos clarified.

"Busy work, being a hero," Potter mused as he leafed through the folder and scowling at parts of it. "So if I'm reading this right… they want me to fix the city."

"Yes," Genos nodded.

"And as compensation…" Potter squinted at the text. "As compensation they're giving the city to me. Or the underground anyway."

"Well," Genos paused and considered it. "Not officially, but… there'd more crackdowns on other gangs in the area, making yours the… main one."

Potter peered at him suspiciously. "So I'd the not-official, uh, mob boss of Z City, that it?" he asked, and turned a page. "With Z City turning blind eye to everything I do and whatnot?"

"Yes, I think that was the idea," Genos agreed.

"With the concession that I'd keep fixing the city of course."

"Yes."

"Without further compensation."

"So I understand."

Potter narrowed his eyes. "And I'd have to manage the other gangs, too, if the city doesn't deal with them first?"

"Something like that," Genos nodded.

Potter stared at him for a moment. "No," he then said and handed the folder back. "That sounds like way too much work."

"Told you," Saitama said, peering between Potter and the beauty magazine he was reading. "So those are called stiletto nails?"

Potter considered them. "I just thought they looked wicked," and waved his fingers.

 

* * *

 

Later Genos heard that the Hero Association sent some other people to talk to Potter, probably with further incentives and whatnot. One of them, he heard later on, got turned into a rabbit. Other grew donkey ears. The third spend a little while hiding under a table and shivering before informing the Hero Association that the wizard would be taking the city over

"But not, he wanted me to tell you, because we want him to, he just wants us to shut up and leave him alone," the man recited. "He was very firm about that. About being annoyed. He is very annoyed. And we shouldn't go bother him again. At all."

It took Potter a couple of days to fix the city, though Genos suspected it was just because Potter was little on the lazier side. Potter and Saitama were something of kindred spirits, after all, and unless really pushed to it they both preferred to go about things at a more sedate pace. Still, couple of days and Z City was back to normal, none too worse for wear – aside from the massive loss of life and the shock that, even with the city fixed, took a while to recover from.

The taxes in the city rose slightly after that. Genos had his suspicions about why.

"So, why did you do it?" Saitama asked later, when they happened on Potter in a sushi restaurant – were Potter was, of course, eating for free.

"Couple days of spell work versus weeks and months of being harangued by the Hero Association and the Mayor," Potter mused, while whirling the mostly symbolic Key To The City in his pinkie. "And Hero Association was starting to give me recruitment speeches. It was really lesser of two evils."

"Hm," Saitama hummed in agreement. "So, seeing that you own the city and blackmail everyone and so forth. I hear you're official Super Villain now," he then said, giving Potter a look.

"I can ctrlaltz your apartment," Potter said, pointing the key at him. "Just in case you're looking for a nemesis here."

"Yeah, yeah," Saitama waved a hand at that. "I was just wondering. Are you going to get a special name, as a Super Villain? Because heroes get names, and I got to tell you, not all of them are all that good."

"Huh. I haven't even considered that," Potter said and frowned. "Any chance I could choose my own villain name?"

"I couldn't choose mine," Saitama said apologetically. "They kind of choose it for you. Or the public does. Or something like that."

"Damn."

Genos looked between them. Hero that could destroy meteors by a single punch and villain who could fix cities by wave of his hand. Somehow the whole thing was a little backwards.

"I'm getting more sake," he decided, leaving the two lament on super hero/villain names.


	25. Mix it up (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by wheretherebescreaming: after 273 lives reincarnation got boring.

Harry had been many things. He’d been a king and a criminal, murderer and a knight, he’d been an assassin, he’d been an artist, a genius, an engineer, inventor. He’d been a healer and a saviour and an angel and he’d been the devil too, a few times. He’d been great person, a horrible person, he’d been famous and infamous, known and feared, he’d been hallowed and hated. He’d been somebody so many times… that he’d pretty much gotten bored of it.

So when he was born into one Uchiha family, he swore to do his damnest to be a nobody at all. He’d just sit this one out, he’d be on the sidelines for this one life, just kicking back and doing nothing much. He’d neither be the family pride or the family shame, no, he’d be the family nobody, the one everyone forgot was there and never missed when he wasn’t.

Turned out, he was as good at that as he was with, well… being _good_.

It helped that he was born to the fringes of the family. Uchiha Haru, the son of Uchiha Shun and Uchiha Michi. His father Shun was a former member of the Konoha’s Military Police Force – broke his leg during pursuit, didn’t quite heal right, retired early. His mother was a nurse in the Konoha hospital – a kindly but all around unremarkable woman who’d never been a Shinobi at all. They neither had ever awakened their Sharingan, they had neither done anything remarkable, and they both were generally considered nice, if altogether very bland people. And Harry, with his plan of being equally bland, fit among them perfectly.

When he went to the Ninja Academy, he did so without much fanfare, and when he dropped out for being too damn lazy, no one really noticed. He was hired into the Military Police Force, same as any pretty much other Uchiha who had nothing better to do, and he was shouted a few times for always being late, and then people pretty much forgot he was even there. Mostly Harry spend his time in the fringes of the Uchiha compound, in the shelter of the one old wisteria tree with low hanging branches, where he was perfectly hidden and out of sight.

Maybe, once he was old enough, he’d slip away from the Uchiha entirely and maybe the village too, and muck about around the world he was in. It was a bit different from Earth and he wouldn’t mind having a closer look at it. And since he was a shinobi drop out and no one important, the village probably wouldn’t even notice him leaving since, well, civilians could just up and take off unlike Ninja, who’d be branded traitors if they did the same.

Harry was planning to do just that – maybe find a hobby or two while he was at it, maybe crocheting or sudoku puzzles, something unremarkable and boring – when someone just up and killed 99.99 percent of the Uchiha. It just… happened. Harry went to the wisteria tree to have a nap, his nap stretched and the next morning he woke up and suddenly, it was blood splatters and dead bodies everywhere.

“What the hell?” Harry asked, stepping out of the shadows, and was promptly captured by the Konoha ANBU who dashed him off to interrogation. Harry was through for interrogators and three different mind scans before they realised that he was actually a Uchiha survivor and not A, someone under henge, B, the killer or C, some random person who had just happened to wander in all the while looking suspiciously like a Uchiha.

“Uchiha… Haru?” the Hokage asked, looking confused as he went through Harry’s rather lacking files. “I… I haven’t heard of you.”

Harry just sighed heavily at that. If only it could’ve stayed that way.

It turned out that his fourth cousin trice removed – Itachi, the eldest son of the Clan Head, Fugaku – had killed everybody except Sasuke, his own brother – and Harry whom he probably didn’t even know existed and hadn’t noticed during the massacre. So Harry was suddenly not a nobody, but a definite somebody – one of the two miraculous survivors of the terrible, terrible event.

“Just please tell me this was actually the act of a mad genius person with performance issues and not like clandestine secret conspiracy thing and Itachi actually did everything on your orders?” Harry asked without hope and the Hokage looked at him alarm. “Great, juuust great,” Harry muttered and banged his head against the table.

The Hokage spend another four hours interrogating him on his suspicious insights and decided that Harry was a genius without compare who had seen everything coming and had decided to take no part in it and in order to do that had faked lower intellect and utter lack of any remarkable qualities and then just faded into the background. And apparently the fact that he’d been able to do it proved remarkable and stuff and so the Hokage slapped half a dozen confidentiality orders in front of him, made him a chuunin on the damn spot after he signed them and then dropped his traumatised fourth cousin trice removed in his lap.

Little Sasuke stared at him with equal amount of horror and amazement as the ANBU did.

“Well,” Harry said and then sighed. Uchiha Haru was currently whopping seventeen years old, and Harry had really been looking forward to his eighteenth birthday – which was when civilians came of age. Apparently that plan was derailed and he was now A, a miraculous survivor, B, the guardian of his fourth cousin trice removed and, C, the Stand in Head of the Uchiha Clan until Sasuke grew to be old enough to take the position.

“Okay, whatever,” Harry said, propped Sasuke to his hip and stood up. “Let’s see about you getting some psychiatric treatment and then I’ll handle the matter of the funerals and we’ll see what we can do with the clan compound – and you,” he pointed at the horrified looking kid’s nose. “Are going to get some epic training because I sure as hell am not going to spend any longer than I have to handling Uchiha’s business. You’re going to be strong, and smart and brilliant, and take over soon as possible. Okay?”

Sasuke burst into tears.

Harry sighed. It was going to be a long couple of years.


	26. God of Fire (Naruto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by tsuyuhime: On Harry, divinity, and Fawkes, who always appear at the most inopportune times

 

Fawkes was a piece of shit. The bird had it in on him.

Here Harry was, minding his own business, getting attacked by random band of ruffians – they did the whole cliché "Gimme all your valuables!" thing at him, so bandits probably. Harry was about to kick ass and do bit of reverse robberin' – he was kinda low on weapons and the sword the head bandit had on was mighty nice looking. Normal, every day stuff on major traffic road, with nice bit of excitement thrown in.

And there was fucking Fawkes, appearing right behind him in glorious display of magnificent flames, all splendid and great and grandiose, spreading his wings all graceful-like – right behind Harry's head, forming a glorious halo of light and fire and magnificence.

"Are you  _kidding_  me?!" Harry asked in annoyance, while the bandits ran away, shouting  _demon!_  and  _it's a Spirit of Fire!_  and  _We're all gonna die!_  and stuff like that.

Fawkes, the great asshole he was, preened and then flew circles around his head until Harry managed to finally grab a tree branch and swat at him properly. The fire chicken vanished before he could stab it, the damn thing.

The next time Fawkes decided to make a fucking idiot out of him was in similar-ish circumstances. Harry was in a bar, having a drink, and a bar fight over bet that he just so happened to win in  _not at all suspicious circumstances._ His opponent had a knife and evil, ugly grin, and Harry was just contemplating grabbing a near by chair and doing it all pro-wrestling style – you know, in the series of pro wrestling where chair legs made good stakes – when the fucking turkey made his presence known.

"You son of a bitch," Harry said in the very quickly evacuated  bar which was now on fire because Fawkes was having apparently a especially exciting time of the month and was throwing up flames all over the place.

The bird cooed and preened his hair and managed to get away before Harry could strangle him. When he managed to make his way out of the collapsing place, his coat was on fire – except it was dragon hide, so it didn't do any damage to it, but still. Fire bird, burning house and him on fire.

"I can fix this," Harry said to the horrified owner of the bar, and did exactly that with couple of waves of his hand, and then the owner promptly went to his knees and pronounced himself unworthy. Harry decided to switch countries after that. Somewhere with little less wood seemed like a good idea.

In the Land of Wind, Fawkes appeared in a in bedroom where Harry was having very happy time with couple of sand-nin, and, okay, maybe there was a bit more asphyxiation going on than he would've liked, but it wasn't like little bit of choking was going to kill him. But then the fucking overcooked roast somehow managed to the ceiling of the sandstone building into glass and nobody had fun after that. Molten glass raining onto bed sheets is just not that big of a turn on for most people, it turned out.

In Land of Rain, Harry was ganged up on by group of drunken ninjas and Fawkes set fire to the rain. Harry really, really wished he would've been drunk or high and just made it up, but no. Fawkes set fire to the rain.

After few melted boulders in Land of Earth and activation of what turned out to be carefully maintained inactive volcano, Harry head to the Land of Waves.

"If you set the ocean on fire, I'm going to  _drown you in it_ ," he growled at the overgrown rooster, wile they were making their way to the islands. Fawkes made happy beeping noises at him, and Harry almost managed to throw him into the ocean – almost.

Harry was happily having a drink at a bar and there was no sight of Fawkes and then some hot headed samurai idiots came along and singled out one of the other patrons for… reasons, apparently. Harry watched the guy – Kaiza – fight against the samurai idiots for a while, wondering if it would be worth it to try and jump in and risk Fawkes appearing again.

Well, just a little fight couldn't hurt

Half of the village burned that night. And someone named Gato sort of accidentally got burned to death. Along with most of his people.

"How can we ever repay you, Kagutsuchi-sama?" the Land of Wave people asked him and Harry made wordless motions of violence at Fawkes who crooned and beeped like the deranged pigeon he was.

That didn't mean he didn't pilfer Gato's money and eventually his entire shipping company too, later. It wasn't like him letting money like that go to waste, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Darlene and Tsuyuhime


End file.
